SUVs - “An Epidemic”

[march46]

An interesting piece on the proliferation of SUVs on our streets and the worrying impacts, particularly on road safety.

https://voice.cymru/an-epidemic-how-the-car-industry-flooded-our-streets-with-suvs/

[Moovart]

I wonder if an unintended consequence of a CPZ will be more SUVs seen in ED.  I see a fair few massive SUVs driving round looking for a big enough parking space and struggling to find one.  Parking pressure is a reason to keep a smaller car or no car but with all that parking space created by a CPZ (albeit paid for), the big SUVs will have plenty of space to park. That would be an interesting study between CPZ and non CPZ areas.

[malumbu]

Sounds counter intuitive.  Trouble is we are all experts in things where we do not have personal experience as an owner and/or user.  Lots of criticism of lime bikes but rarely people come on and post their positive experience.  Dog walkers and owners ditto.  Police officers, enforcement officers, surely some of you must be on this forum.  My expertise on SUVs having hired two briefly over the years with no desire to own one is that it is a life style choice, heavily marketed by manufacturers, and often impractical for narrow London streets with tight parking.  But what would I know?  Surely an SUV driver can correct me!

[Penguin68]

There a very many fewer SUVs on our streets than most people realise. SUVs are Sports Utility Vehicles, and the Utility part of the name means trucks. SUVs are built on a truck chassis and are typically heavier, longer and broader than vehicles built on car chassis. However, because the body style is desired nowadays (the Nissan Qashqai is the best selling car most recently) SUV style bodies are sold fixed onto car chassis (often, but not always, with 4 wheel drive as an option). (And some British SUV style cars are built on Jeep or Land Rover rather than truck chassis - so really an intermediate form between true US style SUVs and cars).

So something that looks like an SUV very frequently isn't. It's true that all cars are now heavier and bigger than earlier (compare a modern Mini to the original) but much of that reflects safety designs, and additionally electric and hybrid cars have heavy batteries to add to their weight.

Many of the apparent SUVs on the streets are no different in size or nature than the people carriers we used to see around (or indeed estate cars). But because they are modelled (as regards the cabin) on the modified trucks beloved of Americans they are mistaken for them.

There are real SUVs about, of course, but I see relatively few. When you see a car with an SUV style body, you need to consider the chassis it's built on - is this inherently heavier as a Truck chassis would be, or is it a car in wolf's clothing?

Edited to add - and with modern safety seats for children having massively increased in size, if you have two children the most practical car to choose is one now modelled as an SUV crossover - car chassis and SUV body style.

 

Edited Sunday at 09:43 by Penguin68

[malumbu]

SUVs are now commonly known as all vehicles high off the ground, be they Range Rovers to cash kis (can't be bothered with proper spelling).

Completely disagree with your assertion that these cars are most suitable for families, having hired numerous cars of numerous sizes,vall apart from the new Beetle, due to no luggage space, we're fine.  Hired a Golf recently and plenty of space for four adults.  And round town a Corsa will get you and your family around. May not be so comfortable on a long drive but even then a Golf will be reasonable.

You will be of the generation where you went on family hols with four kids in the back, luggage on a roof rack etc.  Obviously cars are much safer and comfortable now but please don't start promoting SUV style cars unless you have one yourself.

[Penguin68]

46 minutes ago, malumbu said:

Hired a Golf recently and plenty of space for four adults. 

I was making the point about child seats - two of these in what should be a 3 seat back seat will take up most of that space, so if you want to take 5 people in  a car, two of whom are children, you will be hard pressed in many smaller vehicles. The SUV style of body (but not the truck chassis) allows for this - as do people carriers and estate cars. And once again - SUV 'style' cars which have an SUV style body, but are built on a car chassis are not SUVs. It's like suggesting the old (1970) Mini Clubman or a Morris Traveller were Estate Cars, ! Looky-likey ain't the same. And most SUV style cars (on car chassis) are not actually that high off the ground at base platform - simply with taller bodies - so they're on a standard wheel base but higher overall - so that the front bumpers are at the same level as standard cars. 

It's true that some cross-overs (on car chassis) do have wheels with larger diameters - so do stand taller overall over the ground - but with the pot-hole situation that has genuine safety advantages - as regards driver safety at least.

But it is the weight of the truck chassis (and the strength of its build) which makes true US style SUVs more of a problem (and a better choice for off road usage) . You would be right to assert that these are over-engineered for (sole) urban use, unless they are doubling (as some do) as commercial vehicles. 

I do have a (hybrid) car (on a car chassis) with SUV body styling - which is much easier to get in an out of at my age and infirmity and gives me a better road view than a sports car, and allows me to travel with an extended family, as well as a much more comfortable long-distance drive - but it is not an SUV. It is an SUV style cross-over. For most urban travel around S E London I use a much smaller hybrid. 

I wonder, if the chosen car style for family cars was still people carriers - or Estate cars (people carriers effectively identical in terms of size and road height, estates in terms of length, capacity and weight) if you would be making the same fuss? Or do the initials (wrongly used) upset you?

[exdulwicher]

1 hour ago, Penguin68 said:

IAnd once again - SUV 'style' cars which have an SUV style body, but are built on a car chassis are not SUVs. It's like suggesting the old (1970) Mini Clubman or a Morris Traveller were Estate Cars, ! Looky-likey ain't the same.

I remember back in the "should speed limits apply to bikes" thread, you said, in reference to e-bikes and the difference between legal / illegal (and I quote):

If they are on the road (they are) and can't be readily distinguished from electric assisted bicycles  to the casual and 'lay' observer then both classes of vehicle should be treated similarly, under the same rules.

And yet here you are getting all defensive about what is and isn't an SUV, a term that the car industry itself has kind of adopted and evolved to refer (loosely) to all SUV-crossover type vehicles. Everyone knows them as SUVs and you can probably get into all manner of semantics about "true off-roader" vs pick-up truck vs SUV vs "something that is trying to look like an SUV" but it's all pedantic distraction from the issue which the original article is referring to, "car-bloat".

Cars have got (and continue to get) bigger and heavier and wider and whether it's an SUV or a "something that looks like an SUV but is really just a car chassis with a higher body doncha know", the fact remains that they're more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists than the "regular sized" cars which were normal a decade before. More weight on the roads, more space on the roads and in parking places, more pollution....

https://lloydalter.substack.com/p/car-bloat-is-getting-ridiculous-and

Maybe the article would be more accurate if it referred to "car bloat" or the term used a fair bit now, "autobesity" but the principle remains the same and trying to defend it with the "well they're not really SUVs you know" is missing the point completely.

[Penguin68]

8 minutes ago, exdulwicher said:

the fact remains that they're more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists than the "regular sized" cars which were normal a decade before.

That is true of all modern cars, which are bigger and heavier than 'ordinary' cars 10 years ago, whatever the type, either small run around or family car. If you want manufacturers to reduce cabin safety, or legislators to require no modern cars to be sold, then fine.

Indeed if you and others want generally to argue against modern cars at all, well fine again. But to rail against 'SUVs', when you actually mean modern family sized cars, is simply disengenuous. And, by the way, when quoting my commentary on bicycles please note that the legislation regarding driving an SUV and any other car as regards speeds, compliance eith road rules etc is in fact already identical. Which is all that I was asking for. 

[malumbu]

New models of cars have to meet minimum standards.  It's called type approval and covers many things including emissions and safety systems.

A non statutory change that also added weight is air con.

So yes cars have got heavier, due to improved safety as well as more gizmos  But SUV type models can be much heavier.  A Golf may be around 1.3 tonnes, a range rover twice that.

Not really sure what your argument is and why you are defending the move towards much heavier models.

[Penguin68]

A range rover is built on a jeep style chassis and is reasonably classed as an SUV, although smaller than the classic US types. It is very different from the many crossover types, such as the Qashqai which are really dressed-up cars. My argument has never been that SUVs are good, but that many cars are wrongly identified as SUVs if by that you mean the extra large chassis size and weight seen as being their drawbacks. Their body form may seem 'SUV', their reality isn't. 

[first mate]

The title is a great example of hyperbole even with the use of quotation marks for irony or humour. In future we can also discuss Lime bikes - "An epidemic".

Edited Sunday at 15:17 by first mate

[Insuflo]

Building passenger cars on a chassis went out with starting handles. Range Rovers have not been built on a chassis since the end of the last century. The last British saloon car to have a separate chassis was probably the Triumph Herald, designed in the 1950s and discontinued in 1971. If you must be pedantic, at least be accurate.

[Penguin68]

You are right that I could have referred to 'body plans', but I wanted to emphasise the difference in sturdiness, and weight, of build between commercial trucks, the design basis of real SUVs (the US Utility Vehicles, or Utes) and the modified passenger saloon or large hatchback basis of modern crossover vehicles with SUV style bodies. 'Chassis' is sort of a vocabulary many are familiar with. 

[exdulwicher]

18 minutes ago, Penguin68 said:

 'Chassis' is sort of a vocabulary many are familiar with. 

So is SUV.

[Insuflo]

Exactly, that’s my point. It’s pedantic to say that what most people would recognise as an SUV is not really one. 

[Spartacus]

1 hour ago, Insuflo said:

Building passenger cars on a chassis went out with starting handles. Range Rovers have not been built on a chassis since the end of the last century. The last British saloon car to have a separate chassis was probably the Triumph Herald, designed in the 1950s and discontinued in 1971. If you must be pedantic, at least be accurate.

Not according to this article, a number are still built to this day on a ladder type chassis 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body-on-frame

Admittedly, apart from.a handful of special  British cars, most are made elsewhere in the world. 

As you say, at least be accurate 🤣

However back to the discussion, yes SUV type vehicles do seem to be becoming the norm, just look in any car park, and a lot is driven by marketing and lifestyle selling. 

[malumbu]

7 hours ago, Insuflo said:

Building passenger cars on a chassis went out with starting handles. Range Rovers have not been built on a chassis since the end of the last century. The last British saloon car to have a separate chassis was probably the Triumph Herald, designed in the 1950s and discontinued in 1971. If you must be pedantic, at least be accurate.

Spitfire outlived the Herald, think it made it into 80s.  Same concept and manufacturer.  They were outdated when the range was introduced in the late 50s and it was a cost saving measure.  In the good old days wood was used, oh wait a minute, aren't Morgans still on a chassis?

Edited Sunday at 23:27 by malumbu

[first mate]

Weight keeps being mentioned as a major issue, because of greater damage caused if there is contact. What is the thinking about the move to electric vehicles, which I believe are heavier still?

 

22 hours ago, Moovart said:

I wonder if an unintended consequence of a CPZ will be more SUVs seen in ED.  I see a fair few massive SUVs driving round looking for a big enough parking space and struggling to find one.  Parking pressure is a reason to keep a smaller car or no car but with all that parking space created by a CPZ (albeit paid for), the big SUVs will have plenty of space to park. That would be an interesting study between CPZ and non CPZ areas.

Interesting thought and you may well have point.

[DuncanW]

So if (hypothectically) one is driving a modern SUV - sits on a car chassis but is built out, so bigger and heavier - and if an EV, the battery makes it heavier still -- BUT it is an EV so there's no ICE emissions, it's got the latest anti-collision/auto-braking tech so reallly, actually quite difficult to hit somone, and certainly in this area doesn't get driven any faster than 20 mph (there or thereabouts)... 

 Is that actually a worse proposition than the family cars of 20/30 years ago - all ICE, lots of them diesel-powered - probably have ABS but other than that relying on the driver to brake and avoid collisions - and driven much faster in 30 mph limits with much less enforcement.

The hard metric that smaller cars are likely to cause less harm than larger ones is difficult to argue against, but it's possibly a bit more nuanced than some would have it...?

[first mate]

You also have to factor in which is more polluting.

[Moovart]

I once watched a colleague write off a car in a car park with their big SUV cos they were short and couldn't see very well over the front.  As they swung round between two cars they dented and scraped all four side panels of a parked car with the corner of the SUV without noticing they had hit it 😱

[Penguin68]

It's noticeable that many car parks are no longer fit for purpose with most modern cars, of whatever profile, being substantially wider than their predecessors. Which is mainly about safety build. Big (real) SUVs are particularly problematic. 

[David Peckham]

The problem with that article is that much of the safety statistics quoted are from the US, a market where the two best selling vehicles are precisely the very large 'Body on Chassis' vehicles which Penguin has mentioned - true SUVs. 

Those vehicles, and those like them, are not available on the UK market - we have a thing called 'taste' here. The best selling vehicle in the UK last year was the Ford Puma, a car that would fall under the broader SUV/crossover description, but actually weighs no more than a VW Golf.

I don't like SUVs/crossovers - I think they're ugly & don't drive particularly well, but it's a pretty shoddy piece of journalism based on pretty ropey data and the writer's own prejudices.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The high bonnet, 4 wheel drive vehicle has absolutely no place in London imo. They’re unnecessarily heavy, capable of easily mounting curbs / plowing through barriers, and are much more likely to cause upper body injuries, posing a ridiculous danger to pedestrians, particularly children.

[Penguin68]

And there are relatively few of these real beasts and a lot of sheep in wolf's clothing. By the way, 4 wheel drive is a positive safety issue, without it I couldn't have managed one of ED's hills the last time we had snow, passing a bus that had slid sideways. Just because 4WD is necessary for off roading etc. doesn't make it evil. It may be generally unnecessary on urban roads, but that just means it's an unnecessary cost to the purchaser.