Monsters of the Road: What Should the UK Do About SUVs?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I don't think there is any other period where the front "face" of a car aimed to create such an ugly, intimidating impression (i am huge and i will tear you apart).
Their popularity speaks volumes about the true psychological state of a good fraction of moneyed society.
While wealth display is always a thing, the manner in which it is done is not preordained, it provides insights into the state of society.
Once car manufacturers realized the larger and scarier the better selling the trajectory was locked.
Not that many "small electric cars" out there, Teslas are big, as are the ID.3s and the like coming from Volkswagen. For reference, an ID.3 weights a maximum of almost 2 tons (1935 kg, to be more exact), that's compared to the maximum of 1500 kg for a Golf 7. To say nothing of my 2006 1.4 NA Seat Ibiza weighting just 1054 kg, but which is seen as worst than the devil itself because of its age.
So, yeah, I don't buy this crusade against SUVs coming from EV people, seeing as my very lightweight petrol car is also on their chopping block.
And public transport cannot always replace individual mobility. E.g. transporting big things or sick people is not really an option on public transport
They all get about 200 miles real world, my (£10,000 cheaper !) hatchback, petrol with a 55 L tank and much more interior space than any of those, can push 400.
Why say things that aren't true? People aren't going to be fooled.
That is to say, not 400? Why say things that aren't true? People aren't going to be fooled.
I regularly do 550 miles (850km - 5 return trips of 55 miles each way) on a single 60l tank of diesel in an older car and can do more if I dawdle and cruise more. I know I've been driving badly when the fuel light comes on on before the end of the fifth trip.
Yes, the higher weight of EVs is a bit of an issue. But not as much as people make it out to be.
But there are a lot of big EVs now. I think it’s mainly due to all car manufacturers coming out with a new generation of EVs and the first models they make are the ones with the highest margins. I.e. big cars.
In the previous generations you had cars like Hyundai Kona EV which is completely reasonable size. But the first in Hyundais new generation is Ioniq 5 which doesn’t look like a monster but is surprisingly big.
Not to detract from the discussion‘s topic but weight is an issue. Road damage scales with fourth power of axle load. That’s is, a car with 2t instead of 1.5t does three times the damage.
Why? That's not intuitive to me. (I'm not saying you're wrong, just want to understand.)
That's what people mean when they say EV weight isn't as impactful as people make it out to be.
There's also the assumption that most road damage comes from vehicles. I don't know how it proportions out between vehicles and weather, but weather, particularly freeze and thaw, is very damaging to roads.
The upsizing is stupid - lots of cars either new versions of renamed versions of old ones but with another layer sandwiched in to make it higher, or just grow all dimensions and more clearance.
A lot of them don't even have much / any more room inside.
Suddenly I was looking at bike rack systems worth more than some of my previous cars.
It’s a station wagon though. Still car shaped, SUV cargo space inside.
What in daily life is different in the last ~20 years (when SUVs have grown popular), compared to the ~20 years before that (when minivans were a thing), compared to the ~20 years before that (when station wagons were a thing)?
Further, how often is the 'extra' hauling occurring? Why do you need to drive such a thing daily when the haulage is much less often than that? Wouldn't it save people cost (especially in gas, which everyone in the US seems to whinge about) by driving a more efficient vehicle for the most common case of the daily commute and simple weekend errands? (Renting when something 'extra' is needed.)
Further, what percentage of SUVs (and cross-overs/CUVs) actually have towing hitches to haul things? And for carrying things inside, how many SUVs have more internal volume that a minivan?
SUVs, especially the larger varieties, don't seem optimal for anything except vanity. (Speaking as someone who owns a Golf and who borrowed his parents' minivan almost every weekend as a teenager.)
It was cheaper to by my own pickup and use it everyday than buy a car and rent a pickup on the weeks. when you add the hassle of pickup and drop-off an time pressure to return before you accrue another day charge, owning was definitely cheaper
today, pickups are pillow princess trucks. no scratches, clean bed, no mud.
I am missing my little Toyota. Today, I need to haul plywood, 2x4s, foam board insulation and fiberglass panels for some home projects I was hoping to start today. I instead of using my truck, I have to spend 100+ to rent a body to bring the parts here sometime in the next week and damage them in transit.
Forward visibility for one. There's a meme going around that even main battle tanks (and semi rigs) have better forward visibility than some pick-ups trucks:
* https://carbuzz.com/news/the-abrams-m1-tank-has-better-visib...
And for all that external size, how much internal storage space do you get in a large SUV like the X7? If SUVs are allegedly for carrying stuff, how much stuff can you get in (with and without folding down seats)? How easy is it for people (esp. adults, and not just children) to get back to the third row, and how comfortable is it back there for them?
> Toyota RAV4
Now we're talking about a different class of vehicle than SUVs. Will you also compare it to the glorified hatchback (not even station wagon) that is the BMW X1?
As for internal storage, I am content with the internal storage in a midsize SUV already. Third row in X7 is pretty cramped, if you are regularly driving 7 adults around you better get something with more seating capacity, few people need that IME.
my “big” SUV is smaller in length but larger in interior space and gets 5x further a gallon of gas than the station my parents drove in the ‘70s.
Just some interesting context, the original SUVs were station wagons. The big Suburbans/Wagoneers/Broncos/Blazers of the 70s and 80s were classified as station wagons. In addition, many of the station wagons back in the day got horrible gas mileage (many had the same engine size as their SUV counterparts).
Beyond that, the idea that people would be choose to have multiple cars for different aspects is a bit out of touch. The majority of Americans can't spring for a $1k emergency repair, let alone have another car payment just for a grocery getter. Most people need one car that can do most everything they need. Even if they could afford more than one car, your premise doesn't make sense. How many miles would have to be driven for a $20k used car purchase to have a positive economics based on its fuel savings?
In the Netherlands I often see people with Dodge rams that are noticeably wider and longer than every other passenger car. If this was a large or growing category I can see myself being inconvenienced and annoyed more
XC90 ain't small but ferries 7 people, there are plenty of larger SUVs that carry less inside.
I wasn't commenting on the equality of the Danish tax system, or the status of Singapore.
I was just saying taxing car purchases is another idea to disincentivize cars.
Which means I was always scraping the bottom of my car. Potholes, uneven pavement, damaged pavement etc. It was so bad the plastic coverings underneath tore apart and now I was dragging plastic everywhere I went.
Needless to say for my next car my main priority was ground clearance. I ended up getting a Jeep and now my problems are solved.
So that's my only point, I agree we should all have small eco cars. I would love to have a 2 seater and save on gas. But you have to live in a place with good infrastructure. A lot of cities in the third world are basically "off road" in practicality.
Especially in the third world a car can be an extraordinary purchase, people need their cars to not get damaged easily.
There is no reason why most of us should subsidise a few people’s status symbol and their entirely unnecessary use of public resources. Ultimately you should not be able to buy these, at least in their current form, as they serve no purpose whatsoever besides inflating their owner’s ego at a significant cost to others. We are not talking about pickup trucks and light trucks used in the countryside: these monstrosities are designed for motorways and paved roads and will never see as much as a dirt road.
Not against that, but there should be an exception for electric vehicles, because these batteries are heavy.
No need to unnecessarily dictate technology. We want light cars and we don't want pollution.
4500 kg is MORE THAN TWO Ford F-150
https://nimbnet.com/news/mercedes-benz-eactros-600-a-long-ra...
The reason is that batteries with densities sufficient to make EVs no heavier than ICEs exist (like https://amprius.com/products/ ) but they need investment for production to be scaled up - the 5GWh plant Amprius is planning will go entirely to niche applications, so it's not enough.
Meanwhile the Chinese are introducing cars with 700kg+ batteries:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeekr_009
This is counterproductive.
The scale does not need to be the same, but in the end heavy EVs are much worse than lighter ones.
SUV means "Sport utility vehicle". The Sport part is straight up BS, but the utility part differentiates them from crossovers. An SUV is built on a truck frame or at least needs a strengthened chassis to give it some utility like towing or offroading.
Two arguments here: 1. SUVs are already taxed on weight indirectly - they consume more fuel which is heavily taxed (50+% in most of Europe). 2. SUVs are already taxed higher because they're more expensive.
In some places in the world (e.g. some parts of Switzerland) there's already a tax on car weight. I do not see it being particularly effective.
> there should be much stricter standards regarding visibility. SUVs usually have great visibility because of large windows.
Those costs aren’t proportionate. Road wear increases exponentially as weight increases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
> SUVs usually have great visibility because of large windows.
He may be referring to other vehicles visibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_SUVs
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38150286
Visibility needs depend on your environment.
Road wear depends on the weight and the surface area. SUVs have much wider tyres.
Road wear/damage is proportional to roughly the fourth power of weight. However, this won't have much impact on SUVs directly, but on large lorries and buses. (It's easy to see the damage at bus stops where the slowing to a stop and starting from a stop, both noticeable deform the road after a time. This is also visible at traffic lights.
Tyre and brake pollution are very closely tied to the vehicle's weight, which leads to the issue of EVs producing almost as much total pollution as a lighter ICE vehicle even though they don't produce exhaust pollution. Tyre pollution is one of the most insidious types of pollution due to the size of the particulates and the chemicals used in tyres.
Why not?
Even an increase from 1.5 tons to 2 tons results in 3.16x the damage on the road.
Maybe one way round it is to have tax bands for heavy commercial vehicles and weight-based tax for cars and SUVs.
Edit: thought I'd try to work out an example of pricing.
If a fourth power tax rate on weight works out to a £100 difference between 2 tons and 1.5 tons, then an 8 ton vehicle would be paying over £37,000
That’s a red herring. Lorries don’t have to be taxed the same way as cars, and actually most of the time are not.
Yes, but I can see it being unpopular to introduce a "road repair" tax that is justified based on drivers paying for the damage that they cause to roads and then not apply the same rules to the vehicles that cause the majority of the damage.
SUVs provide drivers great overview of traffic, visibility of other cars, and long-range visibility. This is good. However their height severely limits the visibility of people and items near the car, which is very bad in cities where drivers often share space with cyclists, children and potted plants:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar...
Kinetic energy (thus fuel consumption and particles from brakes) and road wear scale with weight. It's not perfect but it's most of the way there.
> Two arguments here: 1. SUVs are already taxed on weight indirectly - they consume more fuel which is heavily taxed (50+% in most of Europe).
This does not solve the issue with externalities: fuel cost absolutely does not offset the cost to society caused by car use, same for accidents and road wear.
> 2. SUVs are already taxed higher because they're more expensive.
They are not taxed higher, they have exactly the same VAT as any other car (give or take specific government schemes to incentivise things like hybrids and TVs).
> SUVs usually have great visibility because of large windows.
SUVs have terrible visibility and situation awareness because of huge blind spots and higher sitting positions for the driver (which is better on motorways, but terrible in cities). They are also much worse for pedestrians and cyclists in case of a collision.
I don’t think fuel taxes are particularly good as indirect taxes on the externalities one might care about – road wear, vehicle deaths/life-changing injuries, noise, pollution, parking space in streets, passing room on narrow roads, etc.
Cars are not getting more axles, even SUVs, so this is a constant multiplicative factor. I would be happy with a tax that scales as the fourth power of the mass, no problem. That would be actually quite dissuasive very quickly. Though even a linear scaling would be an improvement over the current situation.
> Most fuel consumption is about overcoming drag rather than accelerating so you should expect it to scale with something like cross-sectional area, say weight^2/3, though making cars longer adds weight without much drag and making them boxier can add drag without much weight.
Right. We should ideally account for aerodynamics and drag factors, which also keep getting worse year after year. One does not preclude the other.
> I don’t think fuel taxes are particularly good as indirect taxes on the externalities one might care about
I entirely agree.
Sounds like we should tax EVs then: https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/06/27/evs-cause-twice-th...
The road tear on SUVs will not that that much larger, because they have wider tyres, so when you calculate kg / sqm you might get smaller value than for smaller cars.
No argument on my part: huge EV SUVs are also very bad.
Right. An implicit assumption was that the weight repartition does not change much, i.e. that if 2/3 of the weight is supported by the front axle, that ratio would be similar for a hatchback and a SUV. This does not seem completely unrealistic when comparing ICEs with other ICEs or EVs with other EVs (though EVs will have a very different weight repartition compared to ICEs due to the way batteries and motors are integrated).
With this in mind, the front axle bears 2/3 * m_1 for a sedan of mass m_1 and 2/3 * m_2 for a SUV of mass m_2. So the effective weight (as seen considering only one axle) is just a linear function of the actual weight. It changes the magnitude, but it does not change the scaling.
I think part of the solution would be changing safety standards to better capture the dangers to other road users, changing liability rules/penalties to make such cars more expensive to insure (though probably the effect is too small to make much difference), having some fines scale with the value of the car (on the one hand I think people speeding, etc, in flashy cars should be particularly penalised. On the other, the UK already has some fines that are meant to scale with income and letting people off by driving smaller cars seems bad. Perhaps an alternative would be fines for certain infractions that are higher for cars that would do more damage were something to happen as a result of the driving), installing more bell bollards on corners so the people who aren’t good at staying on the road risk big dents instead of running over a toddler, and more enforcement against minor violations. Lots of those don’t specifically target oversized cars though.
They're absolutely taxed higher. $100k SUV will cause a much higher VAT you need to pay than $50k sedan. So by buying a more expensive car you do contribute more taxes to the state funds.
> SUVs have terrible visibility and situation awareness because of huge blind spots and higher sitting positions for the driver (which is better on motorways, but terrible in cities).
Any sources on that? It's clearly not my experience. Most SUVs have much bigger side mirrors and the side windows are much larger (because the car is taller).
Please compare cars of similar length (so not large SUV vs a hatchback).
> This does not solve the issue with externalities: fuel cost absolutely does not offset the cost to society caused by car use, same for accidents and road wear.
The premise is: does the tax on the additional fuel spent by driving a SUV offset the cost to the society, comparing with driving a similarly-sized but non-SUV vehicle?
Making it a clear example: is driving a BMW X5 that much worse than driving a BMW 5 series (both are similar length, X5 is ~300 kg heavier)?
And HGVs really are the limiting factor on road design. We could ban SUVs maybe, we could ban cars and scooters and bicycles if various factions get their way, but if we ban HGVs - cities starve, in weeks if not days.
Which is why nobody wants this. Though we ought to be chasing efficiency there as well because as you wrote lorries are a significant contributing factor.
In UK all electric cars are tax free be it a smart or a huge SUV and difference in electricity consumption AFIK less than in fuel consumption (thanks to recuperation) for ICE cars. Where I live in the UK I see little SUV in general but cars with green plates (electric) are disproportionately SUV.
The exhaust is not at just the right height for kids in buggies when you cross the road.
Should I be taxed because my car is inappropriate for London, where it will never go?
There already are exemptions and tax credits for professional equipment, right? It’s nothing that has not been solved already.
Unfortunately for me I am commuting to a job through the countryside, and therefore I can't deduct anything.
These alternatives could be better public transport, tax credit for small vehicles or car sharing, incentives for remote work as much as possible, none of which are completely outlandish.
I find they usually have crap visibility other than ahead and over other cars (and only cars) because of the huge pillars to avoid a rollover crushing the roof in with the heavy body and high sides. And that's when driving, when parking, they're a deathtrap until bristling with cameras and sensors because they have massive blindspots all around them.
I don't find the ability to see over the other cars especially helpful because no matter how big an urban tank is, it can't see through a Transit van, let alone an HGV.
The best visibility is a convertible with no B-pillar, but most car-shaped cars (i.e. not crossovers) have better visibility in my experience.
Instead I think the easiest and best option is just to ban SUVs from the public highway. It is essentially car obesity. Just bigger and heavier for no reason. They even look like obese versions of regular cars. Heavier vehicles have more responsibility and require stricter testing and licensing. Heavy vehicles should always be box shaped because that is the most efficient shape for carrying goods.
Almost all large vehicles that I see on the roads are privately owned and cause significant road damage (which is roughly proportional to the fourth power of weight). That means that tax payers are subsidising the profits of logistics companies and artificially reducing the cost to them of using public roads which could possibly change the economics of rail use instead.
But everything about road tax needs to change with the reduction of fuel duty due to electric cars. The public haven't seen this coming yet, but it's going to be a difficult transition.
Ignoring the fact that this wouldn't even work because SUVs would just get extra seats to work around the tax structure.
7-seat private buses wear down the road just as much as private tanks, so tax them equally.
Whether societal family planning should, at all, play into road taxes is quite the question, but it's widely accepted that society should bother to educate its children.
I am wary of this statement, because it could justify banning a wide range of consumer goods and services.
On another note, if SUVs are much more dangerous to others than other cars, insurance claims against SUV drivers and insurance premiums that they pay should reflect this. Why hasn't this happened?
GP qualified their statement pretty precisely: no purpose other than ego, significant cost to others. What's the harm in banning anything that ticks both of these boxes?
"I like it" and "because ego" is a hard line to carve. I usually hear ego-purchase and translate it to "you like it and I don't."
Lots of things are provided at a cost to others. Some argue the modern economy can't exist without exploiting someone. And there is all the things that ticks tragedies of the commons.
What could be made illegal using such a lens? Fashionable clothing seems fit (hell, the US killed off an entire species of pigeon because their feathers looked good on a hat; a hell of a cost to everyone). Mountain climbing or hiking to summit could be viewed as an ego thing and the trails have to be maintained and emergency personnel available -- all at significant costs.
Depending on how sensitive "cost to others is" and depending on how willfully something can only be attributed to ego makes this more slippery.
The most popular "SUVs" in Britain are small crossovers that are compact or subcompact cars by American standards. The Ford Puma is currently the best-selling car in the UK and while it's marketed as an SUV, it's based on the same platform as the Ford Fiesta. It has big wheels and an SUV silhouette, but the base model has a 1 litre engine with a mild hybrid system and 4 wheel drive isn't even an option.
There's a strong marketing trend towards taller cars with a more imposing road presence, but most of these cars aren't actually very big. The psychology is quite interesting - auto makers are trying to make small cars look tough and rugged without actually making them wider, heavier, less efficient or more expensive; this has in turn led to a lot of people feeling intimidated by cars that are basically just compacts in cosplay.
When I see one actually carrying something in the back I'll let you know.
It's cheaper, easier to park and also due to the weather I'd say
It's irritating af.
But the only thing we can do about that is educate people.
For that you'd first need to stop the auto industry to actively miseducate them through ads.
That bring me to another point: Fuel economy ratings. My car is rated at 3.3l of average consumption. That's possible when hypermiling at night, but BS when considering traffic.
I reckon SUVs are even worse than my 50% increase over the rating because their weight makes engine braking less effective in traffic and aerodynamics tend to be less of a problem at the hypermiling speeds they do during the tests than at real world speeds.
my American friend laughed at me, saying something like "a family needs at least a range rover, you can afford one".
So it's not about reason, not about making a balanced choice or something. No, in many cases it's about "get it if you can".
Oh and it's not a SUV, it's a crossover. A pretty low one as well, it's quite confortable on the highway.
And yeah, it's kind of hard to classify UXs. Wiki says it's a "subcompact crossover suv" so go figure. Don't really care, for me it's just a nice reasonably sized car.
Although the industry isn't so dishonest as to pretend that "consumers are more resistant to £30,000 hatchbacks than they are £30,000 'SUVs'" isn't a factor.
Yes, it's a real bugbear describing these as if they're the same as an F-150. Although I've seen more of those as well.
See below from Euro NCAP and sort by "Vulnerable Road Users" (green person walking icon)
https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...
Why should I be financially penalised because these cars are inappropriate for London?
But deflating tyres does not seem to be the way to go. The majority of people just harden their stance if something like that hits them
No amount of environmental conscience gives you morally the right to potentially hurt other people.
They’re so bad that any MP or councillor who promises to fix potholes will get a lot of support.
But crossover are a good compromise. They’re still quite light, have efficient engines and aren’t really that different to their hatchback counterparts. I do think car manufacturers set their prices of this segment way too high, but the market has spoken (they sell tremendously well)
However I feel the need to feel more important and bigger is a considerable factor in their popularity too. They also reflect our growing waistlines.
I have 2 kids and when we go for a trip the my Citroen c4 is full. Would I have one more kid it’s no way we can fit into this car, despite it has 5 seats.
Should we stop thinking about road trips and consider only plane/train/bus? Or should we consider only van/caravan?
I support the argument that unnecessary consumption should be penalised somehow, but I do not support blanket type rules that may discriminate absolutely reasonable people, like those with more than 2 kids.
Big cars in a city have negative consequences for others. This is not only about enviromentalism, but increasing walkability, liveability and bike-ability in dense city environments. In my last city (Tübingen), you have to buy a "parking pass" as a resident to park in the neighbourhood. They recently greatly increased the price for an SUV, which I think is a good idea.
VW sharan length is 4854mm and width is 1904mm
Therefore the difference in sizes is probably less than your palm. These cars are equally reasonable, it’s just a matter of personal preferences I think.
Any mid-sized or larger station wagon. From experience, even riding along in a recent Skoda Superb is quite fun. There is also an enormous amount of space in the trunk, which most SUVs don't have.
And outside of the ability to have a third row of seats the xc90s compared to the v90 are just more expensive with less trunk space and less fuel efficient ...
Booster seat laws alone necessitate larger vehicles.
I have two kids and regularly pack our Honda CRV beyond the point that is possible with our Civic. The stroller alone is big, way bigger than the umbrella one from when I was a kid. The Civic seats with my two large booster seats which I'm legally required to use until the kids are like 8-10, can only fit 4 people despite two people being very small, and the CRV allows my to put my seat the way I like in most situations rather than having less leg room (6'3").
The civic gets about 10% better economy than the CRV and I don't think I'd
With the 406 we did yearly trips to Southern Europe (from Denmark) with 5 people and gear for 2 weeks of vacation. IME people REALLY overestimate how much space they actually need. Hell, a colleague of mine has two kids in strollers. They're leasing a V60. She thinks the car is way too big, and she's looking forward to get a smaller car when their contract runs out.
The plural of anecdote isn't data, but I firmly believe people use the space to justify
Clapham is the land where the war is fought between the SUV and the SUV impaling cones - placed strategically on the pavement to lure them and trap them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/slre54/driving_on_p...
So here I am, the unproud owner of an SUV, myself. I was forced to give up a nice sedan/saloon that was only two and a bit years old, with less than 10,000 of my driving kilometres on it.
The reason for that was to store the components of my wifes mobility scooter. The nicer, smaller car just couldn't hack it. The scooter-storage necessity had turned a normal 4-door 5-passenger car with boot into basically a 2-seater car with practically no luggage space.
On the few occasions when I don't have to carry the scooter in the cargo-space of the SUV, I am still gob-smacked at the amount of empty space in that damned thing. And it's only a mid-sized SUV too.
So please don't vandalise those SUVs. You'd probably find that we're in complete agreement with you if we spent a few minutes over a beer or two.
Regardless, what's more likely when someone deflates your tires and makes you miss an important event—that you'll suddenly take your car to the junkyard and buy a bicycle, or that you'll just have a more negative opinion of environmentalists?
Plus, you can't know why someone's driving a particular car. Maybe that used hybrid SUV was the easiest thing to modify for wheelchair use, the only thing they could afford that sat everyone in their family, or they really do need to tow something a few times a year.
Even in the UK, going onto someone else's property to disable/damage their cars will eventually lead to physical altercations.
While a punctured tyre will deflate, reinflation of the tyre after it has been adjusted with a drill or saw is unlikely to be a simple task.
We are talking about european SUVs which by american standards are small cars.
What to do? Expand cities, allow more housing because people don't want (but are forced by building codes) to live crammed in centuries old apartments, and they want the flexibility of a car that even works offroad (oh the luxury!). Why do we pretend that increasing the value of real estate is the only goal societies should have? People want to be happy. Emissions have become a convenient excuse to make life miserable. We have green technologies in cars and in housing to use, sustainability is no longer an excuse.
(I'm posting this from an exotic holiday in the Indian Ocean, my cousin lives in Essex and has a hire-purchase SUV.)
This would directly target the features that make them unsafe, and it is in line with the safety improvements that are being imposed on buses and heavy goods vehicles.
How does it work for those who aren’t fully bodily abled? When it snows and rains? Traveling non-trivial distances? Hills?
Electric bikes solves the hills-problem for those that don't want to get sweaty. I see lots of parents shipping their kids around on cargo bikes.
I hate the argument about "bodily abled". What about all those that cannot drive? Lots of conditions where that's the case. Or even factors as age (young, old), money (car is expensive). A car centric society is far more excluding than one made for active modes of transport and public transport.
Additionally, one can of course make provisions for those that need a car because of handicaps. Would you be fine if we banned cars in the city centre, except for those not bodily abled? My experience is that those pushing HC as an argument doesn't do it in good faith.
I really do not get this when I see cargo bike with two kids inside, two kids bikes hanging on the sides and bags of groceries pulled by one cyclists. What is the point? Prove that you are strong enough?
And cars are not always the cause https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-bike-accident...
I disagree that cars are more excluding than cycling; very few people of older age would be safe cycling compared to driving. Yes, bikes are far more affordable though.
Electric bikes could be quite revolutionary (I’ve owned various modes of electric personal transport - which I’ve turned into a “net 0” project and entirely charged off solar), but when you said “cycling” I don’t consider them to be part of that: many cities exclude powered vehicles from cycling infrastructure
How does driving work for the many disabled people who can't drive?
With cycling infra, their options are much, much better: mobility scooters, tricycles, ebikes, micro cars, all riding on cycle paths. Add public transport and the fact cars still remain an option and it's objectively better.