Car bonnet heights

[GingerBeverage]

I don't understand how they pass safety tests?

In crashes, high-bonneted SUVs are more likely to strike the vital organs in the core of adults’ bodies and the heads of children. Hitting pedestrians above their centre of gravity means they are more likely to be knocked forward and down and then be driven over. In contrast, low bonnets tend to hit pedestrians’ legs, giving them a greater chance of falling on to the vehicle and being deflected to the side.
The report, by the advocacy group Transport & Environment (T&E), found that the average bonnet height of new cars sold in Europe rose from 77cm in 2010 to 84cm in 2024.
The rise matches booming sales of SUVs from 12% to 56% of all cars over the same period, with the increasing size of vehicles being described as “carspreading” or “autobesity”. SUVs are also 20% more polluting on average and this rise in sales is cancelling out the reduction in climate-heating CO2 due to electric vehicles and fuel efficiency improvements.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/11/ever-rising-height-car-bonnets-suv-threat-to-children-report

Fashion, and batteries, it's easier to fit batteries if you have more height to put them under the floor

And?

If we supervised children properly they wouldn't be running out in front of cars.

Cars are dangerous if you get hit by one, so keep away from them. Stop walking out in front of them. Problem solved. The height of the bonnet is irrelevant, trucks and vans are bigger.

A properly enforced jay walking law (with extremly punitive fines which in the case of children, their parents/carers would held responsible for) would have a dramatic effect on the number of vehicle/pedestrian collisions. If people were fined £500 for crossing the road anywhere other than a pedestrian crossing, attitudes would soon change.

Goodness grief.

Jay walking was an idea created by car makers to sell more cars in America.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26073797

Absolutely wild to think anyone's answer in current year is: Make UK more like America.

Cars should be taxed on size and weight so that these awful SUVs are priced out. I wanted to buy an ordinary family car recently but every dealer tried to sell me an SUV and I had to work hard to find something else.

What rubbish. There is nothing separating pedestrians and motor vehicles. Even if no one ever stepped off a pavement again, there would still be collisions between the two. Obviously nothing can be done about lorries and buses, but these are vastly outnumbers by cars.

I agree totally. We have a fiesta which is perfect for the narrow roads where I live. However I'm worried about my family's safety if one of these high-bonneted SUVs crashes into us, as their bonnet would be at our head level.

Also for my kids trying to cross the busy roads near here on the way to school. Someone mentioned jay walking - a lot of the roads on the way to my kids' secondary have no crossing, so they have to "jay walk".

Not another thread about the MN hatred of SUVs.

^ this, absolutely. I've just spent a week in another (much wealthier) part of the country and these child-maiming middle-class killing machines are everywhere.

Yep, let’s blame those pedestrians for dangerous cars.

I agree, OP. I think people who defend this have lost their moral compass.

Unfortunately it’s next to impossible to not buy these cars anymore.

Cars should be marketed for needs and requirements rather than aesthetics. Lots of kids? People carrier. Space needed? Estate. Live in a city? Hatchback. Ease of getting in? One of those Ford B Maxes.

But people will do anything to justify their SUV rather than admitting they’ve been fooled by marketing.

Also, it’s now going to be impossible to get a 5* safety rating for any car with touch screens as it’s been proven they’re extremely dangerous.

At least bull bars are no longer legal in the UK. They really were dangerous.

I’ve got to be honest, I don’t really care what car people choose as long as they don’t drive like an arsehole. But I saw an enormous SUV yesterday and just had to park next to it to compare it to my tiny Smart ForTwo. The bonnet wasn’t far off the height of my roof. They could probably have driven over the top of me and barely registered it. No idea what car was as I didn’t recognise the badge but it was huge.

I don't have to "justify" my choice of SUV, I just like that shape of car and sitting slightly higher up than in a hatchback it feels like you hold your own on the road with other much larger vehicles.

It's not a huge one and has great visibility all round, and I don't go around mowing down pedestrians in any event.

There are also good practical reasons that I won't bore you with as to why we bought that car.

The rise matches booming sales of SUVs from 12% to 56% of all cars over the same period, with the increasing size of vehicles being described as “carspreading” or “autobesity”.

People are bigger so cars are hardly going to get smaller.

Also while there are still too many people killed or injured on the roads, road deaths have fallen by three quarters since the 1970s and the UK does quite well generally compared with other countries in terms of road safety.

Nonsense. Cases of vehicles mounting pavements are vanishingly rare and when they do happen the shape of the car is irrelevant.

The majority of collisions between vehicles and pedestrians are instigated by the pedestrian walking out in front of the car. People dawdling along, phone in hand, headphones on, absolutely oblivious to anything going on around them.

💯 % agree with the touchscreen ban, they were the most stupid idea ever. Ruined the aesthetics of the car interior and made it impossible to use half the features while the car is moving.

This is the worst idea ever

Jaywalking will give lots of power to the police

We have no where near enough pedestrian crossings

It's just bad on so many levels

It's ideas people come up with who don't live in the real world

Perhaps a career in politics could be for you?

Care to back this up with some statistics?

Cars are dangerous if you get hit by one, so keep away from them. Stop walking out in front of them. Problem solved. The height of the bonnet is irrelevant, trucks and vans are bigger

It isn't that simple. A lot of drivers now think that it's fine to drive along, and park on, pavements. So you are not safe just walking along minding your own business.

And if a child does run out in front of you, it helps if cars are designed not to kill pedestrians.

sitting slightly higher up than in a hatchback it feels like you hold your own on the road with other much larger vehicles.
And how do you think that makes those of us in hatchbacks feel? It's not a competition - 'my car's bigger than your car so I have right of way, toot toot'

Every time I go out for a walk, there will be a car or van parked on a pavement somewhere. They have to get on and off the pavement and they don't tend to care if the pavement happens to be occupied by a pedestrian at the time.

Accidents are vanishingly rare, people using pavements as extensions of the road is not.

Why is the shape of the car irrelevant in these cases?

a Range Rover was parked next to me yesterday in a car park. Thankfully I’d reversed in. Basically my whole car was in the road section before I had any line of sight. Despite slowly creeping someone in an x5 started beeping and shouting at me for my creeping out to see. There could have been a whole school of children hidden by the car and I couldn’t have seen them.

it’s easy to see how they are infectious, if I’d had a taller car I may have had visibility sooner.

@Lifestooshort71 definitely agree! And getting fed up with drivers in these enormous cars pulling so far forward when in a turning right lane that I can't see round them to know if I can go left - meaning I have to wait until they have gone before I can pull out. It definitely feels like "get out of my way little person"