If you buy a massive 4×4 SUV...

[bravefox]

... to ask you to practise parking it in a single space? Saturday afternoon in the town multistorey and the number of huge cars parked half in a second space is 🤯

and Luckily they all arrived on foot 😁 @AnSolas
although I do have a very large glove compartment if the need arises 🤣

And me. We have a huge pick up for husbands moto cross bikes. Only fit in parent and child bays.

I think given the issue with

• bad parking, across drivers irrespective of vehicle choice
• larger vehicles
• larger people
• increased mobility issues

We should just enlarge all parking bays. They did it when building Bluewater shopping centre…….of course that’s a lot more tarmac 🤢

And what if you live rurally, own livestock etc, use the SUV to do the school run…

I love my 4x4. I park very considerately though, always in the lines and always reverse park because it’s safer, especially with such a huge vehicle.

Mine is an suv but not a 4x4.

Thise smaller cars are no good for getting wheelchairs in, I bought my car deliberately so I could help care for a dear friend who unfortunately died recently. Her chair would not go in anything smaller, believe me I tried.

However, I can park it.

Those posters saying spaces aren't bug enough are correct though.it is a well known fact that the car parks are designed with 1980'scars in mind and not current ones. There are some multistorey near me where you would be hard pushed to get a mini in the spaces as they are so bloody narrow

Even worse.
The parking standards date back to the 1970s

SUVs should be banned outright. There is no reason for them to exist.

How did people who lived rurally cope in the past, before SUVs?

People had larger families back then too.

And you can't fit put cows and sheep into an SUV.

4 wheel drives were introduced in 1949 .( military vehicles before then )
A lot of People couldn’t afford them of course so walked everywhere. There would have been more local village shops and schools though.
As pp have noted SUVs are needed to pull horse boxes and around here they also pull hay carts ( tractors as well ) and sheep carts.

Im guessing prior to cars they used horse and carts,

I’m actually very good at parking, and driving in general if I do say so myself. I always parked in the line when I had my mini car, and when I got a family car I do the same! Even if it means I have to hop out and check then hop back in again. Then again I’ve driven vans in the past so I have practice.

Sorry but if you struggle to drive a big car (and I see it so much) - then downsize - get a car that you can park and that you can drive. Stop being a nuisance.

Surely nobody thinks anyone is jealous of their car? What an utterly bizarre thing to think. You can’t possibly belive that, surely.

An aunt of mine (a farmer) had an SUV in the late 70s. My grandfather drove his tractor on the country roads, sometimes pulling loads of hay or milk churns, but also just to get from point A to point B. He also had a car, but it didn't have the flexibility or clearance of the tractor. He couldn't easily check the fields as he drove past either, in the car.

People didn't have to put children in car seats up to the age of 12 back in the day. Those things take up space. I remember sitting in the boot of an estate car that was packed with ten classmates, heading to a party at about age 6. I don't remember the car having seat belts. We often gave three or four neighbourhood kids a lift to school in a car that would probably have accommodated four adults.

You can definitely put sheep in an SUV. You fold down the back seats or take them out altogether and use a couple of planks for them to walk up.

They like to use their own tools, ime. And also, they probably don't all like traipsing from the nearest bus stop or train station to the site, perhaps having to use several buses or trains to get to work and then home again, or on to their side job.

Jaywalking is not allowed in the US, so backing into pedestrians in the road isn't likely to happen. People tend to reverse very cautiously out, and the angled parking makes seeing what's coming much easier. Plus, so many cars have cameras, it really isn't a dangerous maneuver where angled parking is concerned (though the cameras make it easier to back into perpendicular spaces too). Finally, the US is a litigious society, and failing to exercise caution when you're backing out of a parking spot can really backfire on the driver. If you drive recklessly, you also risk having to surrender your license and paying a hefty fine to get it back. The vast majority of people drive carefully and are not jerks.

The US has a huge mortality rate per 100,000 population for car accidents though - broadly 10x that of the UK, and over double that of Canada and Australia. For a developed country it’s quite high, if not at the top.

Anecdotally, it’s also the only place I’ve ever had an Uber driver openly flicking through Instagram whilst in moving traffic 😳

Best take up 3 spaces horizontally then, just to be extra sure it’s safe.

Have you experienced the pot-holes in most country B roads and back lanes. Are family moved from sensible sized hatchbacks to 4x4 after destroying the engine in when it hydrolocked in a 15cm flood (doing around 10 mph) caused by the drains being blocked and the front suspension in a 2nd after hitting a water-filled pot-hole at 30 mph.

Quite frankly the two replacements are stupidly big but at least they can travel on the roads we have around here.

Obviously you know nothing about free market economics.

Supply and demand.

Car manufacturers invest heavily in product research to supply vehicles that people want to buy.

And overwhelmingly its SUVs, ergo, car makers make more of them.

Its called freedom to choose. What will you ban next, peoples thoughts? They way they blink or fart?

Banned outright - LOL. Gotta be the single most stupid comment/argument on this thread, among many of the anti-SUV brigade.

Thankfully though, people that want them, will still buy them - so yeh, carry on moaning about it because your mythical ban aint happening 😂

To add some balance the worst parking I see is by small car owners who just swerve into a parking space making no attempt to straighten up and happy to leave the car at an angle over the side markings .

Actually that’s not the case. The real reason we have a market flooded with the SUVs is that the safety laws and taxes in the US are different for trucks - basically more lax and cheaper.

So the designers concentrate on making things that appeal to the US market - ie on truck type chassis - and slightly reskin them for Europe.

So it’s driven (excuse the pun) by legislation and tax, neither of which offer a free market.

The OEMs then spend millions on advertising, persuading us that we want them. I can see it’s worked especially well for some on this thread.

Partially agree, however the fact remains that the freedom to choose what to buy is the thrust behind the demand for SUVs.

https://www.dacemotorgroup.co.uk/blog/the-rise-of-suvs-in-the-uk-trends-and-insights

Granted this link is but one perspective, but you are sorely mistaken if you think tax and legislation alone drive this push - especially when a lot of SUVs these days fall into the higher VED bracket above £40k.

People are buying them despite that financial hit - ergo, demand is the driver for SUVs, legislation and taxation most certainly arent top dog in that race.

You misunderstand.

The OEMs don’t give a toss about the UK market - it’s far too small. They design for America and we get whatever they make.

Americans want trucks (which SUCs fall within) partly because of their weird ‘Murica, freedom nostalgia crap and mostly because they are much cheaper to buy than saloons or hatchbacks. They are cheaper to buy because the tax system favours them, and safety laws are less strict. That’s why the cybertruck isn’t sold in Europe - it passes US truck safety laws but not ours.

That article is copy generated by the industry as part of the millions they spend persuading the customers what they should want.

The fact that UK drivers pay a premium for SUVs is neither here nor there - OEMs do not design for us. They design for America (and to a lesser extent, Asia & Europe - tweak the skins to make them complaint).

If you think our tiny car market has any influence on the designs available, I’d like to discuss a bridge I have for sale.

Free market is something advertisers like to help us pretend we have but it’s all down to their profit margins - not our ‘choice.

@Organically

With respect, I think you're misunderstanding me.

As i said, I partially agree with what you said about US designs coming here and yes agree the UK market is small.

The fact remains, people are choosing to buy them. No marketing strategy in the world would compel me to buy a product from Apple.

Similarly, no marketing strategy can "force" or coerce people into buying SUVs.

Thats evidenced by small car purchases too.

So whatever the transatlantic sales/design virtues may be, people buying SUVs are doing so because they want to - not because they're forced to.

That is free market choice at work. If people didnt buy them, would OEMs still make and ship them to the UK? Course not - they'd be out of business.

food baby?