“Autobesity”: More than 150 car models too big for regular UK parking spaces | Hacker News Reader

“Autobesity”: More than 150 car models too big for regular UK parking spaces

theguardian.com

104 pointsrwmj69 comments

The article mentions safety, and I think safety is an interesting discussion because at its limit, it creates perverse incentives. Manufacturers focus on the safety of the driver and passengers of the car. Not on the safety of anyone else. Thus, the safest vehicle on the road is a tank. Your babies will never come to harm if you drive them to school in a Leopard 2 tank. But this is a worse outcome for everyone else. How do we make cars safer? We make the windows smaller and the body (armor plating) bigger at the expense of making it harder for the driver to see, we make lights brighter so the driver can see at the expense of blinding everyone around them, we raise the bumper of the vehicle so it rolls over other vehicles in an accident, we increase the length and width of a car so that it doesn’t roll at the expense of being able to make tight turns or fit in a parking space, on and on and on.

I think there is a point where we can say that “safety” has gone too far. Maybe we’re there now; maybe not, but I wish that this was a higher priority discussion because it has many downstream effects.

The ironic thing it that it is a negative sum game: as your car get bigger you are safer and other are at greater risk, as everybody else cars get biggers you are in greater danger more so than your cars makes you safe.

It is a classic iterated prisoner's dilemma.

Once enough people (few percent points) start playing the tankification game the only reasonable strategy is to start playing too not to be left behind. But the only winning strategy is not to play (ie to make it illegal for others to play).

This also creates a self-enforcing effect: When the SUVs climb high enough in the sales statistics, they start out-crowding the other cars at the dealerships. A few years ago there was a larger diversity of car models - nowadays it seems to be mostly SUVs that are available. Gone are more sensible sized coupés and MPVs.

This year I had a chance to visit California (11 years since previous time) and there's a noticeable number of smaller cars on the roads. They still look a bit out of place among trucks and typical large SUVs but 11 years ago all cars were same big size.

I think Japan did this? set a max area for a vehicle? That's why we see a lot of boxy car designs in Japan

>Manufacturers focus on the safety of the driver and passengers of the car. Not on the safety of anyone else.

This is not true. Euro NCAP ratings depend on how the car damages pedestrians:

https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...

and crash avoidance technology:

https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...

The effect this has on the cars on the market is huge. Jaguar and Mercedes had to remove their iconic badges, pop-up headlights disappeared, the fronts of cars are much higher and rounded to reduce head injuries in a crash, and every modern car has a multitude of crash avoidance technology that defaults to being turned on when the car is started.

I think Europe is much better than the US for car safety. Having uniform bumper levels also help a lot. I’ve always wondered about the legality of driving a US pickup truck in Europe. Do you have any more resources about that sort of thing?

It's not illegal, just dumb (fuel is much more expansive here, parking spaces and roads aren't designed for huge pickup trucks, and if you're a farmer it makes a lot more sense to have a regular car + farming tractor than to have a pickup truck). So basically only hobbyists drive pickups. I've maybe seen 10 of them this year?

It’s culturally frowned apron (think “What does this person have to prove? How pathetic”) but that sentiment is being eroded by advertising. SUVs are more profitable to car manufacturers.

> there is a point where we can say that “safety” has gone too far.

Everyone's safety is the Number 1 rule in avionics. How or why is the motor vehicle industry exempted from responsible design?

The best-selling vehicles in the US are trucks: pick-up trucks as urban transport! The motor-vehicle industry is also building trucks as passenger vehicles with more seats. The marketing term is "SUV".

The further absurdity of making large-battery electric truck-passenger vehicles is squandering the opportunity to make smaller, efficient EVs and reduce pollution. Over 1.3 billion litres of petrol are burned in motor vehicles in the US every day.[1]

Of course, any category of product that depends on the petroleum industry is unlikely to be part of an environmental solution, even if we were just hoping to have less pollution in our communities. The annual loss of life due to motor-vehicle accidents is a frightening figure (30K/year in the US, 20K/year in the EU). Double that number for estimated deaths related to pollution from burning petrol.

But don't blame the industry, it's your own fault and personal choice to breathe the atmosphere. /s

The sustainable community response is not to demand that "car park providers [...] think of new ways to accommodate larger cars."

Governments seem afraid to pass crucial legislation and Industrial accounting nationalises this heavy annual loss by merging it in the "personal freedom and incompetence" column.

[1] _ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/use-of-gasoline...

Oh my goodness the lights! Am I misremembering or is it really only the past few years that it's felt like half the cars on the road have their highbeams on constantly? Not even a big car thing, though big cars make it worse; it's any car with LED headlights.

My car, and several of my recent rentals, have had automatic high beams. They’re usually not great about not just blinding people. Turning it off is one of the first things I generally figure out.

That said, yes, high hoods and higher, brighter lights make this a distinction without a difference.

I've honestly been asking myself if this is because of so many aging drivers who are trying to compensate for vision loss, when they should probably be staying off the roads at night? There can be a lot of denial in accepting one's reduced capacity.

Or, is it people who have become so accustomed to automatic-everything that they don't really know or think about the light controls? This could also explain the reverse problem of people driving around a night with only daytime running lights or parking lights.

Or, is it really just selfish jerks like those who want massive tanks to crush their opponents? They would like to give others sunburn, if possible. This could also explain those turning on fog lights in all conditions or those who attach off-road auxiliary lights to their trucks but use them on the streets.

In the US- yes, it's so annoying, like half of the drivers never switch to low beams. Or maybe nobody checks the alignment of headlights, idk...

I think it's automatic highbeams mostly. They either make the driver lazy or unaware of who they're blinding. Sorta like how it's a bit jarring to go back to a car with completely manual lighting after driving one that automatically flips on low beams when it gets dark.

I have automatic high/low beams function and it works pretty well, sees other cars from far away and switches to low earlier than a human would. The problem is I very rarely use high beams, and never on highways, so it was even stranger for me to see so many Americans drive with high beams. In Europe the annoying habit is to drive with front anti-fog lights on all the time, some people do it but it happens in the US too.

I don't get what's wrong with foglights. They don't blind nearly as much as a low beam in a corner (or a slightly misaligned one), but make it easier for others to see you.

Yes. Most implementations of matrix high beams are bad.

The VW Passat for example (and most derivatives of it) is straight up dangerous because the camera system doesn't work properly. The only way to make it detect my car is to blast it with my high beams (which are 50W incandescent bulbs, so the other person isn't totally blind).

Having to do that is absolutely ridiculous but unfortunately there won't be a recall if the customers aren't the ones who have to live with the problem.

On the topic of safety, the US has enforced the provision of back-up cameras, because people kept running over their own children backing out of their driveways.

A very direct safety cost of large vehicles. Here is the story of the child that had the American law named after them, told by his father (warning: this is truly heartbreaking stuff):

https://www.kidsandcars.org/child-stories/cameron-gulbransen...

Large vehicles make crashes more common and more deadly. This is extraordinarily well-documented. They have poor visibility and so often drive right into pedestrians (especially children). If they hit pedestrians, they are far more likely than a normal car to kill them. They are tall and block other people's line of sight. People in a sensible car hit by a large car are several times more likely to die than if they are hit by a sensible car.

SUVs make collisions more common and more deadly. Anyone who doesn't know these facts is so ignorant about road safety they have no business driving. Anyone who knows these facts and buys a giant "car" anyway is so selfish and reckless they have no business driving.

Unfortunately most people are selfish. Successful communities have put a price on being selfish, but a car gives the driver a certain level of anonymity.

An SUV hitting a pedestrian leads to bigger harm as the impact is higher up on the body. An SUV hitting a car leads to more injuries for the people in the car, as the weight of the SUV easily crushes the car windows and the frame around them.

A lot of it is lack of choice. My Toyota Yaris now is considerably bigger than my Toyota Yaris from 2005. I would actually like to buy a smaller car.

Personally I hate that if you want a reasonably sized trunk you need to buy an SUV. My early 2000 Hyundai Accent hatchback had a nice trunk compared to what you can get in that category now..

> Anyone who knows these facts and buys a giant "car" anyway is so selfish and reckless they have no business driving.

That really doesn't take into consideration the negative sum nature of car safety that your sibling comment goes into. The issue is that safety requirements for vehicles are largely about occupants. They don't include sightlines, maximum heights, maximum weights, etc. (things that would make other people safer) thus the incentive is to build tanks.

Parents certainly don't need a huge SUV to fit their kids in but, because there are other SUVs on the road, they do want it for safety. Put the right incentives into your safety regulation and cars will shrink.

Don't many of the same issues apply to EVs, given the relative heavier weight?

I would have thought so too, but I just checked and a base Tesla Model 3 weighs just about the same as a base BMW 3-series.

I wonder if the weight is like the rocket fuel problem for larger vehicles. Famously the battery pack for the electric hummer weighs more than an entire Civic.

The ID.4 weights more than the slightly larger RAV4; the F-150 Lightning is between 800-2500 lbs heavier than its gas counterpart.

Seems like the rocket fuel rule holds true...

I've been driving a 2005 Honda Odyssey van for 18 years. It has excellent visibility out the back.

My wife has a 2015 Mazda CX-5. Poor visibility out the back but it has a fair backup camera.

In May, 2018 every car was required to have a backup camera. [0] It feels like car manufacturers don't even consider visibility out the back anymore since they can rely on the camera.

For a while I drove a Jaguar, which had the leaping Jaguar hood ornament. Those were prohibited in Europe and manufacturers moved away from them. [1]

Years ago, I read that hoods were required to be higher (which blocks vision in front of the vehicle) to form a crumple zone. The idea was that a pedestrian would be tossed up in the air, land on the hood, and it would give rather than having the solid engine underneath. [2]

So there are definitely some governmental reasons why manufacturers do what they do. Thicker pillars protect passengers but reduce visibility. Etc. And most customers want bigger cars.

[0] https://www.autoinsurance.org/are-backup-cameras-required-on...

[1] https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/cars-trucks/au....

[2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/12/07/while-other-countries...

In recent cars, the visibility out the backup camera far surpasses the very limited visibility out the back window. It is also better in low light situations where the camera can adjust gain to brighten the scene when you can hardly see out the back at all.

As long as the back view lets me see cars while driving and the side mirrors let me see the lane beside me, that's sufficient. I don't care about what I can see when twisted around looking back.

I don't disagree that there's an aspiration towards larger cars for safety, but only part of that is *because other people are getting bigger cars".

Drive into any UK city today and you'll be sharing the [often quite small] roads with 44 tonne lorries, 18 tonne buses, and LGVs and vans you'd need a ladder to see over. People feel safer in bigger cars in cities because the roads are so unsafe.

To break this spell we have to have hard size limits. No HGVs in cities, permits and height limits for commercial vans in urban residential areas (no vans and trucks as primary vehicles), and nothing bigger than a (wheelchair accessible) Citroën Berlingo on residential streets otherwise.

This won't reduce much traffic but it should make it a lot smaller.

There's a natural stop. A typical drivers license in EU countries(and I don't think the UK has changed that) allows you to drive a car up to 3500kg total weight including everything.

> How do we make cars safer? We make the windows smaller and the body (armor plating) bigger

The car does not have to defend itself from projectiles but from decelaration. The human body can whitstand certain forces until things start to break. That's why the cars are bigger. If you look at euroncap.com you will see that cars with small distance between the front of the car and driver's seat score worse than the cars where this distance is bigger. Same thing for side or pole crash.

> I think safety is an interesting discussion because at its limit, it creates perverse incentives

Well that's what happens when you leave safety to capitalism: products compete over safety. Profits dominate collective well-being.

It's similar to what happens with health care, where the American Medical Association opposes public health because of obvious incentives.

You just named two of the most heavily regulated industries. In the case of SUVs there’s a compelling case to be made that they’re the direct result of regulation.

yes, but no.

you look only on vehicle size, but it's only one part. there are technical solution to prevent those problems. my car (circa 2019) has cameras/radars and they enable car functionality of pedestrian detection, small pet detection, kangaroo detection (only in australia?), animal detection. New models have more/better radars just for this i think.

Technical solutions vs the laws of nature - which side do you think wins?

E.g. SUVs are heavier, so they take longer to stop - if a child runs on the road in front of you, it will have less chances to survive if you're driving an SUV.

which laws of nature ? survival of the fittest ? or evolution - people evolve build-in radars to avoid collisions.

if child runs on the road and you do not drive carefully in order to take it into consideration, it will end badly. there is probably better chances that child will survive when i drive my suv for two reasons

- because my seat is higher it easier for me to see from "above" somebody been between cars ahead and running out, compared to somebody who sits in reno clio on the ground and seeing nothing till last moment

- there is a good chance that radars in "last moment scenario" will react faster than human.

otherwise lets ban vans, buses, tracks, etc

> because my seat is higher it easier for me to see from "above" somebody been between cars ahead and running out, compared to somebody who sits in reno clio on the ground and seeing nothing till last moment

You can fit 9 kids in a row in front of an SUV without seeing them:

https://media.nbcwashington.com/2022/07/SUV-Blind-Zone-Demon...

https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/must-reads

If you will pile them, you can probably fit 30. Or 100 toddlers.

But the real question, did you ever run into situation when 9 kids sitting on road suddenly appeared in front of driving car?

> BMW i7, which when parked in a standard bay will stick out more than half a metre, posing potential challenges for other motorists manoeuvring around the car park, as well as pedestrians

Seems like the clear solution is to ticket or tow folks who don't follow the rules for your parking spaces, as you might for someone who parks in an emergency vehicle area or a handicapped spot.

This seems like a very obvious solution.

If I drive a school bus as my daily driver I don’t get to park it where the rest of the cars park.

People have an extreme aversion to making car drivers cover the cost of externalities, and the results of their decisions.

I don't think it is a good solution at all - regular consumers buy cars that are type approved and certified as cars by various regulatory bodies, and they should expect that normal parking spaces should accommodate their car because that's what they own. If you made a "car" that was heavier than 3500kg it wouldn't be type approved as a car anymore, it would be classed as a truck and you'd need to have a C/C1 licence to drive it and you wouldn't(shouldn't) expect to be able to park it everywhere. Why isn't the same rule applied to dimensions? Normal car that can be driven on a B class licence should weigh less than 3500kg AND it should be smaller than whatever the problematic dimensions are. That's not to say that cars like the i7 shouldn't exist - just that they shouldn't be classed the same as a Toyota Aigo.

Heavier vehicles are dangerous to everybody around them, particularly vulnerable people like children and the elderly. Because of that, it would make sense to disincentivize their use.

Here are some ideas:

- Safety standards should prioritize the safety of people outside the vehicle, as they are the ones forced to suffer it, unlike the person who made the purchase.

- Require a commercial driving license for pickup trucks.

- Tax private vehicles proportionally to the amount they damage the road. I.e. stop subsidizing their road maintenance.

- Make electric vehicle subsidies inversely proportional to their weight. I.e. incentivize e-bikes, disincentivize SUVs.

> - Safety standards should prioritize the safety of people outside the vehicle, as they are the ones forced to suffer it, unlike the person who made the purchase.

A rational person (probably in a majority of situations in the US), would try reasonably hard to get a safe car to drive. That reasonable effort almost certainly involves writing letters to representatives if necessary. Most people don't have "don't run over pedestrians" as their top priority, even if they won't admit it.

Then those cars should not ever get homologation, because they are not fit for roads.

I also agree with this sentiment. Someone type approved them as cars only requiring a basic B class licence, when they don't even fit in a lot of our parking spaces. That shouldn't be a thing.

If you drive an SUV in a city, you're part of the problem.

Preferably Walk, cycle, get a bus, get some transit, share a lift, drive a small car.

Years ago there was a guy with one of those "Humvee-like" Hummer truck who would park this huge thing in a narrow residential street. Here's the streetview of the actual street (sans Humvee): https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4485729,5.4735559,3a,75y,171...

It stuck out ridiculously far, cars had trouble passing, and I wouldn't be surprised some slightly wider cars ended up being "stuck" there.

It’ll have to change, because pollution from tyres is worse the heavier the car. As that becomes a larger proportion of the pollution as emissions drop, eyes will turn to that next.

This isn't simply a fashion. Part of the reason why cars are getting bigger is that people are getting fatter, and no longer fit into older models. That also explains why SUVs tend to appear first in countries where obesity is more prevalent, such as the US and UK.

Lol no. Obese people are not the cause of a booming SUV, and now truck, market. Almost every single one of my friends drives a SUV, truck, or both and literally none of them are obese.

Edit: a few are overweight, yes

The fact that your friends all drive SUVs kind of proves my point. Assuming you're in the US, the vast majority of the population is, to put it kindly, portly. If you've lived there all your life, it's something you may not be aware of. Travel to, say, France, or Morocco, and you'll see the difference.

All decent EVs are also on the large side. I suspect it's because the bigger floor helps fit more batteries.

That's more to do with the fact that buyers expect car prices to correlate more closely with size than the manufacturing cost actually does, so manufacturers are prioritising bigger cars to maximise profits.

Since interest rates are rising, expect small cars to return to European dealership forecourts in the next few years.

There's plenty of small EVs that people who like small cars buy and enjoy. Maybe less so in some places e.g. I don't think the ID.3 (which I wouldn't even consider particularly small) didn't get released in the USA because there wasn't enough demand for a car of that size.

Idk, renault zoe looks decent and is relatively small

To those painting parking lots in the UK: You had one job, and you failed miserably.

1. We call them 'car parks'.

2. Our standards for car parking spaces and garage sizes haven't changed since the 1930s and our standards for road-building haven't changed since bicycles were the New Thing. We have people driving steam-powered traction engines around, and are still building new steam locomotives. We're not going to rebuild our transport infrastructure because car manufacturers have decided for the past few years that cars need to be big to generate big profit margins.

They failed to maximize the number of spaces in the lot that can accomodate a reasonably-sized automobile?

UK and Ireland (as we copy a lot from the UK) spaces are ridiculously small. Average cars struggle to fit. Big cars / SUVs must be a nightmare to park. Not sure why car park designers don't have one less space per row, and make every space those few valuable cm wider.

SUVs are a cancer originating from US (as with other greed- and gluttony-themed inventions). In fact, US is slowly coming to the realization that their own joke has gone too far. No nation needs to import it.

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