Australians are obsessed with SUVs and huge utes, but experts say they are making our roads deadlier. Road fatalities recently reached a 12-year high.
Australians are obsessed with SUVs and huge utes, but experts say they are making our roads deadlier
Vehicles with a front height that's above the average adults waist height should be given automatic zero stars for vulnerable road user protection rating.
Anything with a zero rating should be restricted from being driven while on probation. They should also attract a special extra registration fee.
The fact that at the moment some high fronted child crushers can get 5 stars is a damming indictment of ANCAP.
Not to mention heavy!
My little Jimny has a (comparatively) high grille and it will do some nasty damage to anyone who I neglect to see, but it only has 1200kg of mass. Still enough make people have a bad day and not the most ergonomic thing to lean against when it is moving. The Driver Assistance Systems are not great, but enough to stop me from making too many stupid mistakes.
These huge American behemoths weigh 3-4 times as much, have even worse visibility and the nose is shaped like a giant tenderising mallet. The driver assistance systems are just as bad, but meet a checklist of features that give the drivers as false sense of complacency and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ from AMCAP.
The simple solution is to start requiring heavy vehicle licences for these tanks.
If they're over 4.5t, and a kitted out one can get that heavy, they do need to upgrade to light rigid.
The majority of them have a GVM of 3495kg, which is just below the threshold of requiring an upgraded licence.
I am pretty sure they do get kitted out above the GVM without a legal GVM upgrade.
I would love to see a VicRoads blitz on GVMs of large vehicles and Caravans.
HR is for big trucks. LR / MR would be appropriate for these jumbo cars. Bigger fines for fuck ups too. Should also be 0.00% on the breatho.
The anecdote at the start of the article is insane; "I didn't hit you, otherwise my sensors would have gone off. You rode into me!"
Outside of that, the statistics in this article are very eye opening, especially as someone who has to ride their bike along an unprotected bike lane on a major highway just to get into town if I don't want to use the car. 38 deaths / year is a lot less than the ~115 for pedestrians, but considering how many more people walk than ride, those odds are still pretty terrifying to me.
And speaking of that car, funny the article outright says "If you're in a Mazda 2, you're not coming off okay [against a collision with an SUV]" because my daily driver is an early 90s Mazda 323. It's always felt unnerving to drive it alongside large cars, especially as it's so old it doesn't even have *an" airbag or ABS.
I wonder how much of her denial was Denial and how much was avoiding guilt.
Driver Assistance Systems are there to assist a competent driver, not to empower an incompetent driver. If the second party is using these features as a crutch to compensate, or excuse their shitty driving, they need to be charged with reckless driving and needs to have the book thrown at them.
Make them exempt from tradie tax breaks
Problem fucking solved
yup, this is the whole problem here
I'm curious if it's actually preference or if it's supply side. From casual browsing Toyota looks to have completely eliminated their small cars (e.g. Echo) and their smaller cars (e.g. Yaris) are getting bigger and more SUV-like. Volvo stopped selling their station wagons in favour of SUVs and I can't think of any station wagons left on the market. Most of the EVs in the Australian market seem to be SUV-like, especially the MGs which have dominated the "remotely affordable" category for a while.
It's possible the manufacturers are just responding to consumer demands, but I'd like to see some evidence of who's driving the change.
As a fan of wagons, yes it sucks that there are so few left to buy.
The European manufactures still sell wagons here. But $$$
There is also still the WRX wagon.
Indeed it is a trend. e.g. I really like the earlier Subaru Forester size. Now they're just like the rest. Sad and unnecessary imo.
I have a 2006 Forester, but a couple of my family members have the newer models. The size difference is quite significant when we're parked side-by-side, mine looks like a small car these days.
It's expensive to develop a car in general because of ever increasing safety and tech requirements. It's probably $10k of safety equipment per car. That's part of the reason why the Yaris is $30k right now. The days of mass producing a small car on razor thin margins is incredibly risky and offers little reward.
The other thing is a change in consumer demand. People will happily fork out more for larger vehicles, and some will fork out tonnes for off-road based cars. These can offer very healthy margins.
There's is also cleaver marketing, in that in large parts of Australia, you "must" have a big 4wd. I have driven my Suzuki all around Australia can safely say you don't need a 4wd unless you plan on going off-road.
Most of the EVs in the Australian market seem to be SUV-like
Eh, there's SUVs and there's SUVs. Manufacturers have taken to calling everything an SUV because people will pay more that way.
My EV gets called a "compact SUV" but really it's an oversized hatch.
We need to get these death traps off our roads! If anything else was killing people at these levels, they would be stopped. Somehow cars are exempt.
Not gonna deny, but people often misrepresent SUVs. Take away the full-sized Land Cruisers, they are almost always more fuel efficient, much more reliable and easier to drive.
My EF Ford falcon when I was on my Ps was 5m long, had no ABS, no airbags and had a 4L engine that averaged 16-18L/100km around town. My mother in law's new RAV4 has an engine half the size, hybrid, and gets 5L/100km. It has back up cameras, and sensors all round.
As for duel cabs and wannabe overlanders, yes, I hate them as much as the next person. They are truly a master of none and don't even fit in the garage. Toyota's like "fuck it let's charge $100k for something we designed in the 80s", and boomers flock to it like flies to shit. I've driven one which was so heavy and full of mods it needed it's Gross Vehicle Mass rating upgraded (costs about $5k), thus having heavy rock hard suspension. It drove as if it had no suspension and was an absolute slug.
Different vehicles for different purposes.
My brother had a V8 VB commodore and his mate had a L6 VC commodore. The big V8 was much more economical on the highways, while the inline 6 was much better when stuck in traffic.
I used to have an L4 Grand Vitara and an A V6 Alfa Romeo. They had the same economy.
My mate recently purchased a V8 petrol Y62 Patrol for towing his camper instead of a L4 diesel LC250 Prado to tow his camper. He reasoned that the cheaper upfront cost would offset the increased fuel bill.
What he found was it was more economical when touring, but it was also cheaper around town as well, as long as he used his right foot and his brain to control the accelerator and didn’t use his testicles to control the accelerator.
I've heard about the y62 getting better economy than the 200 series LC a few times now in some scenarios. Shows you how far petrols have come and the improvements in autos.
The new 250 I can't rap my head around it. You would really have to not like the V6 Everest, and the 150 was a fantastic platform from stock for most people.
You're conflating vehicle form factor with age and features.
This is going to continue. No one wants a tiny car once you get a taste for driving an suv. The more people who eventually try it the more you'll see on the road. The more those cars sell the less smaller cars will be made at all.
I am the exception to your rule. Driving an SUV to the shops feels like effort compared to driving a small hatchback.
I'll never understand people that drive these entirely unnecessary abominations. Energy efficiency should be a major motivating factor in vehicle choice: which generally indicates smaller vehicles for most tasks.
I firmly believe that most local, individual journeys should be made by eScooter these days, and a saloon car is already the best format for mid range family trips (it wasn't broken - just go electric).
SUVs are mostly a sign of sociopathic tendencies - a manifestation of the drivers need to be feel bigger, heavier, stronger than the next person. To be confident you'll injure the other party in a crash regardless of who was in the right.. because "fuck you I can afford this".
If you live in the country, fine, the rugged format makes sense. Drive one exclusively in the suburbs to pick your shopping up? The choice says something about the buyers personality IMO, and it's not favourable.
You wouldn't catch me dead driving one by choice.
Easy. Cut the tax break for these cars.