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If, like me, you reside within the UK, you’ve in all probability observed one thing: there are increasingly sport utility automobiles (SUVs) and comparable varieties of massive automobiles on the streets. These accounted for an enormous 63 per cent of latest automotive gross sales within the UK final yr, up from 12 per cent in 2010.
Globally, the determine is about 48 per cent and exhibits no signal of coming down. Automobiles are getting larger, and that may be a drawback. I work on the hyperlinks between transport and well being. This month, along with colleagues, I made a name in The BMJ for motion to be taken – domestically, nationally and internationally – to curb gross sales of those automobiles.
The principle classes of well being harms from automobiles are street hazard, air pollution and other people driving as a substitute of strolling or biking, that are higher for his or her bodily well being. Bigger and heavier automobiles are worse for all three of those dangers.
It makes intuitive sense that bigger automobiles are extra harmful in the event that they run you over. Their fronts are blunter and taller than different automobiles’ and that is unhealthy information for cyclists and pedestrians if one in all these automobiles hits you. I used to be concerned in a evaluation final yr of all the research taking a look at what occurred when an SUV hit a pedestrian or bike owner. We discovered that adults have been 44 per cent extra seemingly to die if hit by an SUV fairly than a traditional automotive. The evaluation additionally estimated that within the US, 10 per cent of pedestrian and bike owner deaths and severe accidents could be averted if SUVs have been changed with smaller automobiles. This interprets to about 1700 deaths and severe accidents every year.
Automobiles are additionally getting wider – a development often known as “carspreading”. On common, new automobiles in Europe bought half a centimetre wider every year from 2010 to 2024. There may be solely a lot street area, and extra of it being taken up by automobiles means there may be much less of it for folks biking or utilizing different modes of transit. We all know that if extra folks have been strolling and biking, there could be huge advantages to their well being. So automobiles getting larger means we’re lacking out on that upside, too.
The additional measurement of those automobiles additionally makes for extra air air pollution. The shift to extra electrical automobiles is clearly excellent news, because it means much less emissions from exhausts. However even when SUVs are electrical, tremendous particles from tyres and brakes at the moment are main sources of air pollution in city air and are produced each by electrical automobiles and fossil fuel-powered automobiles. As SUVs are heavier than different automobiles, they have a tendency to provide extra tyre and brake particles, so we don’t see the identical clear air advantages from electrical SUVs as we do from smaller electrical automobiles.
So what can we do to make fewer of those massive, harmful, high-emission SUVs? My colleagues and I’ve just a few recommendations. There at the moment are clean-air zones in some huge cities, such because the Extremely Low Emission Zone in London. These stimulate folks to consider air pollution from older automobiles, though they aren’t directed at car measurement. That is altering within the UK, nevertheless, as Cardiff Council in October permitted plans to cost the house owners of SUVs and bigger automobiles extra for residential parking permits. This implies the Welsh capital joins Paris, which famously tripled charges to park SUVs in its centre, in addition to different cities in Germany and France, which cost extra to park heavier or larger automobiles.
In addition to parking laws, nationwide governments might contemplate modifications to car taxes, as an example, to encourage smaller automobiles. Taxing massive automobiles extra could be commensurate with their value to society by street hazard and air pollution.
Some folks have causes to wish a bigger automotive. However now that round half of latest automotive gross sales are SUVs, we have to be clear concerning the risks they carry to our well being. If we’re going to have safer streets and cleaner air, we want folks to contemplate these points when shopping for a automotive. We additionally want governments to do extra to carry the prices of those automobiles into line with the additional hazard and air pollution they trigger.
Anthony Laverty is on the Faculty of Public Well being at Imperial Faculty London
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