To think the law needs to change on 4x4s and Supersized SUVs in Cities.

[JustMint]

Unsure how, but today's news is just horrifying, these vehicles really need to be reduced in numbers in residential areas in my opinion. They are significantly heavier than smaller cars (I know that's stating the obvious) but who really needs a 4X4 in a city?

No one who lives in a city needs an SUV.

I'm a farmer who owns a Landrover but can fortunately afford a small runaround. This is recent development and before that we used to put 30,000 miles on the LR and now this is down to 5000 miles.

Very few farmers would dream of buying the new LR Defender, the few that do probably wear tweed and have other people doing the work. There is a vast difference between types of farmer and farming, not all are loaded and not all work hard.

Very few people who live rurally need to drive a 4x4 for the odd day of bad weather.

@Flickersy Not only can you buy a tractor but if you have a full UK driving license you can drive one. Tractor licenses are for people who want/need to drive a tractor at 16.

@Florenz I have tractors and I have a Landrover, most farmers have both. I use my LR to take cattle to market the tractors stay on the farm doing what they are meant to do. It's 80 miles to market and not a journey I can do in a tractor as it is illegal to drive tractors on a motorway. Also your argument that no one needed a car 130 years ago is stupid. 130 years ago there were local shops, cottage hospitals and people rarely moved further than the next village, I definitely could have walked my cattle to the local market.

They are already mega taxed, at first registration and yearly.

I don’t think you understand HNW and UHNW individuals and how they decide to spend their money.

they consider things like insurance and road tax etc even at a mega inflated rate, to be a cost of their freedom to do whatever they like. It also shows and reinforces how wealthy and powerful they are. Their view on what’s expensive is often completely different to the average person.

MzHz no you are right that I have no understanding of that mindset. It's totally against what I was brought up to value (reasonably comfortably off but not showy in the least!)

Most SUVs on the road are owned by normal people, not just the mega wealthy. We are never going to stop the people driving G wagons and hummers, but we should be stopping the average family choosing an unnecessary SUV

Love this video and the carsized.com website it links to. Food for thought.

I personally chose the safest, smallest car I could, because I value my own and pedestrian/cyclist life equally. I don’t know how I would live with myself if I accidentally killed someone on the road. Driving safely and not choosing a tank is all I can do.

I don't tow but have a 4x4 estate - my husband was a wheelchair user and we needed the boot space, especially with the pushchair and car seats for the kids. I have a 4x4 because I live rurally and often need it to get down the lane to work!

My bad. I was getting my info from The Times article today. The point I was trying to refute is that estate cars and big SUVs are equivalent in tonnage

Yes and no. Cars aren't autonomous and so the kerb weight is only relevant in very limited cases.

Kerb weight is the total weight of a vehicle, along with all standard equipment, fluids and fuel. To find a vehicle's gross weight, you add its kerb weight to the total weight of the driver, passengers and any cargo or luggage.

So as I mentioned previously, optional extras etc make a big difference.

To be consistent you'd need to look at your vehicle gross weight, although there's still some variability there.

Yes it is a mess.

I agree people don't need SUVs - they are ridiculous on many levels - too big, take up too much road space, are not needed in urban areas and encourage their drivers to drive unsafely.

However, the accident yesterday would have been deadly even with my little Toyota Yaris. A car versus a child at speed isn't going to end well for the child, whatever the size of the car.

Cars should be fit for purpose. Not status symbols

I agree.

I'm actually really glad you used that word - "tank". Because as that video and website illustrate... Some of the SUVs people are driving now are often comparable in size to the biggest of WWIIs tanks, albeit minus the gun mount. It's just completely unnecessary and excessive for most of the people driving them around now.

At some point, this "I can do what I want with my money" mentality starts making things worse, and more dangerous, for everyone else, and imo that's when you become a bit of an arse for making selfish choices. Not only are you influencing the market so the rest of us don't have as many sensible options, but you are putting your own and others' lives at greater risk with that choice. That cost-benefit only becomes even remotely rational in a very specific set of circumstances, which I think some people obviously do meet. But there's also a lot of whataboutery from people who could get by comfortably with alternatives if they really wanted to, they just don't want to. Which, again - "I can do what I want with my money" shouldn't fly when you start endangering other people for your own vanity.

But then you know, as that video also raises, in at least one instance industry research results essentially boiled down to showing that SUV buyers were significantly more likely to display a whole selection of traits that essentially amounted to being selfish in general and dangerous in their driving habits, and in the vast majority of cases used the features SUV ownership is "justified" with once a year or less (towing, going offroad). Features which smaller, different models or cars are often perfectly capable of covering anyway.

Honestly - the video says it all excellently with a wealth of sources.

I don’t understand why none of the safety measures on her car triggered. My Volvo, sees anything in front or behind it when I’m reversing and it slams its breaks on - it’s scared the crap out of me a couple of times. I assume a Range Rover that costs twice as much has a similar system? I can’t find anything on their website though.

Their chances of survival would be higher though

Yes this is exactly the kind of use which is appropriate. You bought an estate car because you need the boot space. You didn't 'upgrade' to a pedestrian-squashing high bonnet Range Rover just because you thought it would impress your neighbours. You chose the smallest/lowest car for your needs.
Another person might need a higher car because a specific disability makes it easier to get into or something. Again, that's appropriate.
It's not appropriate when a couple with no disabilities and no need to tow, buys a 5.5m Range Rover. An estate car would be fine if they have kids/dog etc.

Why do people keep insisting a small car would do the same damage? It's obviously nonsense! Sure you can kill someone with a small car but a heavy vehicle at the same speed is going to travel further and impact with more energy and that's even without taking the higher position of impact into account. Agree with other its exactly like the stupid gun arguments.

Definitely. It's not yet known how fast or what happened exactly but it's clear it had to mount the kerb to get onto the grass. Defenders are built to make light work of kerbs. A Yaris is not.

There was a thread on here some weeks ago where loads of posters were complaining about their lane assist and AEB systems, and declaring that they’d turned them off. Lots of protestations about being better drivers than computers and how they didn’t need such technology.

Most SUVs on the road are owned by normal people, not just the mega wealthy. We are never going to stop the people driving G wagons and hummers, but we should be stopping the average family choosing an unnecessary SUV
How are you going to define 'the average family?'
I'm having a silent laugh here, just imagining a car salesman looking a family up and down, then saying, "Sorry, you look far too average for this SUV. Can I tempt you with this Kia instead?"

Probably the kind of people who buy their cars by walking into a showroom and dealing with a salesman, rather than the people who have a personal shopper do it for them

Maybe they did and some of the safety features prevented even more loss of life...

Some of my brother in laws family including two children were killed in a horrific car crash. Their car was totalled. In an SUV they might have survived. We have a Discovery and only drive Landrovers as a direct result of that crash - to protect us on impact. It’s not about status symbols but about driving a car that would keep us safe in a crash.

It’s rare for us to drive in the city tbh but if we did we would be driving carefully and safely.
This tragic case appears to be dangerous driving. I’m not sure there’s any point speculating until there’s been an investigation and trial but you can’t just blame the vehicle. An suv in safe hands is a safe vehicle. In dangerous hands it’s a dangerous vehicle.
But driver and passenger safety is important too.

I agree. It's laughable watching 4x4 drivers gingerly drive over speed bumps though or refusing to move over as they might get icky mud on their tyres.

Yes, emergency braking is the system

https://www.landrover.com/ownership/incontrol/driver-assistance.html

We are an average family buying an unnecessary SUV because the only non-SUV options were much older (fewer safety features, less reliable) or too expensive or they were diesel cars (long story, not feasible).

Discourage the manufacturers from making everything an SUV style and people will buy something else.

I would prefer not to have an SUV but I'm not going to pay thousands more just to get a non SUV when the SUV is fine for our needs even though I don't particularly agree with the proliferation of them.

It's not like they said here's an SUV and here's a non-SUV and we went ooooooh yes the SUV brilliant. They're like here's an SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, (handful of unsuitable cars for other previous reasons)