European cars are getting 1cm wider every 2 years #autobesity
"Crash data from Belgium from 2017 to 2021 shows that a 10cm increase in the height of vehicle fronts raises the risk of death by 30% when a car hits a pedestrian or cyclist, according to a study by the Vias Institute, previously the Belgian Institute for Road Safety."
With cars getting 5mm wider every year, and bigger cars more likely to kill other road users as well as pumping out ever more emissions, Paris votes to triple parking charges for #SUVs. This seems like an excellent strategy for avoiding the potentially regressive nature of schemes like London't #ULEZ which potentially penalises poorer people with older cars.
Update: With cars getting 5mm wider every year, and bigger cars more likely to kill other road users as well as pumping out ever more emissions, Paris votes to triple parking charges for vehicles over 1.6 tons, some, but not all of which, are SUVs, a distinction that is apparently important to car nerds.
A story that perfectly illustrates #autobesity is that my parents bought their house two years and are now planning to get the drive widened. They've had to park in the street that whole time because the drive has walls on both sides and if they park in it they can't open the car doors to get put. It's one of those postwar houses, so presumably the drive was perfectly adequate for ~60 years worth of cars till they moved in.
Been wondering about some of the "Hulking pickups are too big for parking spaces" discussions.
I know most cars/trucks have gotten bigger over time. I decided to research 20 years of size change for a couple examples: a Toyota RAV-4 mini SUV, and a Dodge RAM 2500 pickup.
I checked dimensions for both using Edmund's statistics for relevant years, and tabulated what I found.
Note the most succinct argument against "Trucks are too big to park" - the width has remained essentially unchanged for two decades. 4x8 sheets of wood fit across the bed - did then, still do.
The Toyota, on the other hand, has gotten wider and wider - nearly 5 inches wider. A Tesla Model S is just over an inch narrower than a pickup. A model X is less than an inch narrower.
The weight, too, has grown - over 45% increase for the Toyota, vs. 15% for the truck.
Pickup grill height, on the other hand, is completely out of control. GMC, Toyota especially looking at you.
More than 150 car models too big for regular parking spaces
The ‘autobesity’ epidemic eats up public spaces
"More than 150 car models are now too big to fit in average car parking spaces. While the size of the standard parking bay has remained static for decades, cars have been growing longer and wider in a phenomenon known as “autobesity”."
Aussie 'business tool' a killer?
"Large SUVs reported to increase the risk of serious injury to other road users by a third more than medium SUVs. Road safety experts propose levy on large SUVs in city to curb rising Victorian road deaths"
"While financial disincentives have been shown to benefit road safety in Europe, Australia must first remove incentives encouraging the purchase of large SUV-type vehicles..More than 50% of new vehicles sold in Australia last year were SUVs...The signals the governments are giving people is that there is nothing wrong with larger cars."
Parking charges based on vehicle weight
"In Paris, owners of big, heavy cars will have to pay extra to park. Size, weight and motor will be taken into account as councillors target ‘dangerous, cumbersome’ vehicles. The aim was “to focus on an absurdity: auto-besity … the inexorable growth in the weight and size of vehicles circulating in our cities..”.
"SUVs are dangerous, cumbersome and use too many resources to manufacture."
In the Guardian today: #Paris will increase parking fees for SUV in the city in order to address “#AutoBesity”. May it be a source of inspiration for #Berlin