Over a million of these behemoths flood the UK market annually. The promise of AVs is great, this surge raises serious concerns regarding their safety and practicality. Now are we as urban people going to squeeze the larger models into parking that was not designed for them or intended for them. Over decades, the trend of supersized cars has taken root across much of the world. In the United States, sprawling, wide roadways create the perfect environment for these much larger vehicles to prosper.
To make matters worse, upcoming tariffs on automobile imports that were authorized by former President Donald Trump will further exacerbate this issue. These tariffs will only make those price increases soar. With so many more consumers choosing to drive these massive vehicles, the risks have reached a crisis level. The Economist editorial board did the math and determined that, in certain limited circumstances, the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks increase net lives saved. Those vehicles kill more other motorists.
These results show that the largest and heaviest vehicles on US streets are disproportionately responsible for deaths of people in smaller passenger vehicles in crashes. The analysis shows that these vehicles cause 37 deaths per 10,000 crashes. On the other end of the scale, cars with median weight lead to 5.7 deaths each and the lightest vehicles just 2.6 deaths.
This alarming statistic points to a troubling reality: although larger vehicles may offer some safety advantages to their occupants, they simultaneously pose a greater risk to those in smaller cars. This analysis finds that car bloat dramatically increases risk of being killed while walking across the US. As these larger and less crashworthy vehicles block visibility, they increase the impact force in the collision.
Whatever the reason, the fact is consumers continue to gravitate toward larger and larger vehicles by the millions—not just for their supposed safety or utility. Urban planners and safety advocates have repeatedly raised alarm that this trend comes with deadly implications for those who use our roads. Cities are finding it harder to create allocations for them too as public parking spaces go the way of dinosaurs. This begs some fundamental questions in the feasibility of actually owning such vehicles.