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A Greenpeace installation of an SUV in the ground next to the Brandenburg Gate,
Berlin, 22 March 2023. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA
A Greenpeace installation of an SUV in the ground next to the Brandenburg Gate,
Berlin, 22 March 2023. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA
OpinionPollution



FRANCE HAS HAD THE GUTS TO CRACK DOWN ON SUV DRIVERS. WHY DOESN’T BRITAIN?

Laura Laker



These hulking vehicles are lethal to pedestrians, disastrous for the environment
and have no place on our city streets

Thu 27 Jul 2023 10.00 BSTLast modified on Thu 27 Jul 2023 13.37 BST
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835
835

Walking on a busy London street recently, I heard a shout. “Don’t hit me,” a
cyclist screamed, as a Land Rover driver reversed into his path. Next, it was my
turn to jump out of the way. The driver lurched forward, veering unexpectedly in
my direction just as I was crossing a sidestreet.

A moment later, another panicked voice behind me; a little girl scooting in
front of her mother overshot the pavement ever so slightly, and came just inches
from the driver’s path. Behind the steering wheel the driver appeared impassive,
apparently unaware of the consternation in her wake.



Perhaps you could dismiss this incident as an example of simple bad driving, but
SUVs represent a unique danger on our cities’ roads. Their popularity has boomed
in recent years. Drivers are drawn to the higher road position that offers a
feeling of security. But research from the US has found that while SUV drivers
are involved in fewer collisions overall, when they crash into children, the
collisions are eight times more likely to be fatal.

More than 120 modern cars available to purchase on the UK market now overhang
standard parking spaces, claiming ever more of our public space. These hulking
vehicles were originally designed for off-road driving. And advertising
campaigns featuring rugged terrains would have you believe this is how many are
still being used. But in the UK, the overwhelming majority of drivers do not buy
them to drive off-road: three-quarters of these vehicles end up polluting city
streets, with a high proportion concentrated in the affluent west London borough
of Kensington and Chelsea.

Alongside their growing popularity, there is also a determined momentum to crack
down on their usage in European cities. In Paris, officials will introduce new
parking charges next year for larger and heavier vehicles. Noting there are no
dirt paths or mountain roads in the city, David Belliard, its deputy mayor for
public space and mobility policy, said SUVs are “dangerous, cumbersome and use
too many resources to manufacture”.

In the UK, after the tragic collision at a Wimbledon school involving the driver
of an SUV, after which two children died, the European Transport Safety Council
called for a ban on SUVs in populated areas. “Do people need
two-and-a-half-tonne vehicles to take their children to school?”, said a
spokesperson. “London has done a great job on restricting the movement of
freight vehicles. There is no reason why you could not look at restrictions on
these types of vehicles too.”

And yet banning SUVs is unlikely to be simple. For manufacturers, they have far
superior sales margins compared with normal cars. Since 2018, manufacturers have
been spending more on marketing for these vehicles than standard cars, sometimes
more than all their other cars combined.

And the ads work. In the 10 years to 2018, SUVs went from a 7% share of the EU
car market to 36%. They now make up half of all car sales in Australia, and 46%
of global car sales, according to data from 2022, at a time when other car sales
were dropping.

Fritz Gahagan, a former marketing consultant for tobacco, could have been
talking about ads for SUVs when he said: “The problem is how do you sell death …
you do it with the great open spaces … the mountains, the open places, the lakes
coming up to the shore. How could a whiff of a cigarette be of any harm in a
situation like that?”

The global tobacco epidemic was fuelled by savvy marketers to devastating
effect. According to a small study in Australia, SUV fuel consumption may in
fact be between 16% and 65% higher than advertised, and yet ads still present
them as desirable vehicles, associated with beautiful landscapes and adventure.
We must start challenging this faux reality.

What frightens me about the climate crisis is we don’t know how bad things
really are
Roger Harrabin

Read more

What those ads leave out, among other things, is the fact SUVs use on average a
quarter more energy than medium-size vehicles. They generate almost 1bn tonnes
of CO2 emissions annually – the amount by which we overshot our Paris agreement
targets. Their increasing adoption is directly contributing to the climate
crisis, according to the International Energy Agency.

Campaigns such as Badvertising and Comms Declare are calling for increased
regulation of the way SUVs are marketed because of their substantial negative
impact on our efforts to meet carbon-cutting targets. But there is more to be
done to diminish their presence. Let’s start with charging drivers who insist on
owning large vehicles proportionately to their damage to our roads, our safety
and environment. This could be through vehicle excise duty (car tax) and
road-user pricing – a per-mile road user levy.

Levers such as low emission zones may be causing tensions politically, but the
evidence shows they work to clean up city air. We could follow the example of
our French neighbours; the city of Bath, which is consulting on emission-based
charges; and London councils such as Islington and Tower Hamlets, which have
introduced higher charges for parking the most polluting vehicles. If these
measures end up costing people more, why not pass the cost back to the companies
responsible?

The horse may have bolted on SUV ownership, but we do have tools at our disposal
to discourage people from driving these dangerous vehicles. Now is the time to
put our foot down.

 * Laura Laker is a journalist who writes about cycling and urban transport

Topics
 * Pollution
 * Opinion

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 * Transport policy
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