Britain's roads can't keep up with our cars
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
In the UK, local authorities are in charge of parking enforcement. In Oxford they largely don't bother: I see vehicles parked on yellow lines every day. I can't fathom why, this is an opportunity to raise revenue!
typically this is related to weight/size - except in the case of electric vehicles which are heavier than their ICE counterparts
For example, the BMW X3 is 1670 kg. The Tesla Model Y (SR RWD) is 1778 kg.
The smallest Tesla is a D-segment car, cars around 4.7m: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-segment
There are 3 different car categories smaller than the smallest Tesla.
For smaller cars, EVs are a mess, they're between 25 and 40% heavier than equivalent ICEs, that's a humongous difference.
> Would love to see more Mini/Smart car EVs
Teslas are big cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-segment, they're not Minis. The smallest Tesla is 4.7m long.
There are 3 car categories smaller than the smaller Tesla.
But yeah, EVs are heavy.
The Renault Zoe was a best seller in some countries because it's a great city car. Sadly Renault have cut back production due to diminishing margins due to supply chain issues (official version), which is a shame. There's also the Fiat 500 EV.
I’d propose we make the tax highly non-linear too…
They hit a deer on a country road and that airbag caused £6,000 of damage to the car...
Who's laughing now? ;)
You can also notice how pushy all these Range Rover drivers are on our very narrow roads.
In any case I agree; these vehicles do not in fact make us more safe, overall.
Where even the most innocuous residential street will have a garbage truck that damages the road far more than cars do.
Not that their aren’t many more problems with large cars in terms of pedestrian safety, congestion, waste of parking space, etc.
I have rarely seen roads with parked cars blocking half the road in Europe (at least in France) whereas this is common here in the UK.
https://www.gcat.org.uk/blog/?p=682
Edit: thankfully never built!
Other measures should also be considered but our Tory government will never contemplate them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_(cigarette)#Marketing
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/8e/70/228e700a28f190746ea9...
If you require various crumple/impact zones for safety reasons, which are usually all about controlling the impact deceleration over a longer period of time, i.e. less g-force on the occupants etc, then the relevant car parts get larger. Doors get thicker, front and back get extended etc.
I suspect it would be quite difficult to walk back those changes, so it may be better to roll with them a little, and dictate better minimum sizes for car parking spaces. (Which might dovetail quite nicely with the increased weight of electric cars - which apparently causes issues with multi-storey parking structures which are designed around lighter cars, and may not be structurally safe if filled to capacity with vehicles 50-100% heavier than expected).
(Not counting the truly ludicrous outliers - like the mentioned EV Hummer and Rolls Royce etc).
Note bigger cars will have more mass and thus momentum & energy to dissipate, might be less nimble and certainly in the early days of SUV types were easier to roll.
A 5-star car from 2015 is likely to be significantly less safe than a 5-star car from 2023.
Drive slower and everyone is safer
Fyi, I live downtown in a major North American city that is known for having good public transit.
In this context, there is effectively no distinction between a modern minivan and a modern SUV.
1995 Honda Civic - curb weight of 2100 pounds.
2000 Ford Focus - curb weight of 2500 pounds.
2023 Toyota Corolla - curb weight of 3000-3100 pounds (depending on trim level).
2023 Toyota Sienna ("minivan") - curb weight of 4600-4700 pounds.
2023 Toyota Highlander (SUV) - curb weight of 4300-4500 pounds.
2023 Honda Odyssey ("minivan") - curb weight of 4500-4600 pounds.
2023 Honda Passport (SUV) - curb weight of 4200-4300 pounds.
2023 Honda Pilot (SUV) - curb weight of 4000-4700 pounds.
Anyway, the minivan is slightly heavier than the equivalent SUV - but close enough to not really matter.
Compared to most large East and Southeast Asian cities (Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore), public transport in American cities is generally lousy, especially if a 15-minute drive (that's about 10 – 15km, maybe) turns into a multiple-hour affair. At that rate, one might as well walk.
Funnily enough I saw a traffic warden issuing tickets in Oxford last week.
This doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
For example, the 2022 Toyota Aygo X has a 4 star NCAP safety rating (out of a possible 5) [1], and is about the same size as the original 1970s VW Golf [2].
[1] https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/Toyota/Aygo%20X/46259
Either way, it undermines the statement that the increase in car size is primarily due to new legislation which makes it impossible to build a small, safe car.
I agree that small cars can be made to be safe nominally, but one cannot argue with the mass component of the kinetic energy equation. I say this as someone who drives a car that weighs slightly above a ton, and I'm well aware that I'd likely be on the losing end of any collision with another vehichle on the road.
I thought (assumed) the whole point of NCAP ratings was to compare the safety of different cars.
The Aygo is, in theory, categorised as A-segment, along with the VW Up! and Fox, as opposed to the Polo (B-segment) or Golf (C-segment).
i.e. maybe not directly comparable with a car considered to be two size categories further up the scale.
For cars registered before March 2001, it's a payment based on engine size (smaller or larger than 1.55 litres); couldn't tell if that's aimed at perceived wealth, pollution, or just leftover because that's how it was back when those cars were new.
March 2001 to March 2017, it's a payment based on CO2 emissions. Pollution based.
April 2017 to present day, it's a payment in the first year based on CO2 emissions, and each year after that a fixed rate based on fuel type only, EXCEPT that if the list price was over 40000 GBP in which case it's a bit higher for the 2nd to 6th years only. So pollution based for the first year, and then a short period of perceived wealth based, and then just a poll tax.
Come on UK, pick one! Are we taxing this based on pollution, apparent wealth or just plain poll?
Oh yes, also; if your vehicle was registered in 1983 or earlier, you can register it as exempt from this tax entirely. A UK nod to encourage classic car enthusiasts and people who are just really good at car maintenance, I guess!
It changes every so often. There was a time when this annual tax had nothing to do with CO2 emissions; that was judged to then be something that should be discouraged by means of this tax, so it changed.
If weight of vehicle is now a meaningful factor, an obvious step is to make this tax higher for heavier vehicles.
I anticipate politics-driven tinkering with it from here on in. Perhaps we will look like the UK after a few more political cycles.
In any case wider roads should be built if only to accomodate decent cycle lanes, which is also something touted as the way forward.
People started buying Pick-Ups. Huge US-style Pick-Ups...
I live in a big city here and seeing a single Pick-Up was something very special up until a few years ago. Now it seems it became a symbol of rebellion against the movement to car-alternatives and expansion of bike infrastructure.
Maybe the UK needs less roads?
You can't have fewer roads in a country whose population grows by hundreds of thousands every year...
Population growth means that we need to get more people using active travel (which would also save the NHS a huge amount of money) and have effective public transport. To get more people using active travel, we need some decent cycle/scooter infrastructure, so we should be narrowing roads for the motor traffic. Cycle infrastructure would increase the throughput of the road as cyclists don't usually suffer from congestion.
There is no silver bullet. Adding decent cycle lanes means wider roads, and there's nothing wrong with that.
> Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand.
How do you propose to build new housing estates, new schools, etc. and to link them to the rest of the country?
No you don't - bikes and scooters take up far less room than the same person being sat alone in their car. The increased throughput of people would drastically improve the efficiency of the road. Also, if the people choose active travel instead of driving, then you also remove a large number of cars from the road and also reduce congestion for the people who have to drive.
New housing estates will need joining up to the existing road network, but they also need to have good public transport links to avoid the roads being just filled with people stuck in cars in traffic. Also, they should have good walking/cycling options too which is often completely neglected by developers. Obviously new developments will need some road building, but it's a mistake to think that adding roads will reduce congestion.
Ultimately, personal cars don't scale beyond a certain population density. If you aim to add more roads, the shops and facilities end up becoming more separated which then leads to more people choosing to drive to get there. The extra people driving then leads to more congestion which leads to more roads which leads to facilities becoming spaced further apart and requiring even more space for parking facilities. It's an exercise in futility.
It's not possible to solve problems by refusing to acknowledge reality. We need pragmatism.
We should be copying the infrastructure designs of European cities that have been successful at getting people onto bikes etc. (Although not the "kissing bridge" as that's a stupid design for bikes). I thought you were pushing the idea of building as many roads as possible - that's clearly not pragmatic.
The other very noticeable aspect to travel around Copenhagen is that they have excellent public transport. It's incredible to see the number of bikes they manage to squeeze onto their trains during busy times.
It is not the SUVs and EVs that caused this problem but decades of ignorance towards building a suitable and proper system that fits the conditions of Britain.
A lot of new large cars are not only large ( taller and wider ), but have a tendency to have privacy type glass. This means if you are in a traditionally sized car behind you can't see much of the road ahead.
Driving in a busy city, the lack of visibility of what's happening beyond the car ahead is very disconcerting.
Solution? Get a bigger car yourself, with a higher driving position.
My region's water company has paid huge fines for dumping sewage, which are invested in improving natural water quality...
“We don’t need electric windows. In the 1970s, face-level vents were introduced, so the reason for having windows has largely gone away. And why do we need motor-powered seats? Most people don’t move their seat. All these creature comforts that we hardly ever use add weight.”
Go back to essentials, and you can shed a looott of weight (and size, too. Besides cost & environmental footprint).
That's the heart of the problem. The phenomenon described in the article is just one of many symptoms of this. And we (or our governments) are not addressing the root problem as strongly as needed.
Expect things to get worse before they get better.
The road damage from EVs hardly matters compared to HGVs, buses and the biggest vehicles. Road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of weight, so cars aren't responsible for most of it. This can be verified by looking at bus stops and invariably the road surface is damaged by the bus stopping and starting there. A similar effect can be seen at traffic lights.
Isn't it funded through general taxation? Income tax, NI, dividend tax, duties, capital gains tax, VAT and so on all go into one pot out of which comes some money for the highways agency (who maintain major roads) and local authorities (who maintain minor roads).
On that basis, what would be wrong with the combination of encouraging (electric?) motorbikes while also making changes to road furniture to improve motorbike safety?
1. We have oversized articulated lorries running down smaller village roads. The ones that are extra tall, that we didn't have 20 years ago and which also damage trees. Other locations seem to do better with rules barring them from coming off the main motorways.
2. The local council has been defunded by central government, who also tries to take more locally raised money central for pet projects in London. As such we don't have the cash for road repairs. There are a lot of patch jobs these past couple of years that don't last, the roads need proper resurfacing. I see a lot of EVs around here, and I don't know what it's like in Czechia but the additional weight of the EVs are only making it worse when compounded with the other problems.