SUV's - cities, public spaces and regulation

Couldn't see a thread relevant for this. Am sure I'm not alone in noticing more and more outsized SUVs. I find this arms race of ever bigger and more powerful private motor vehicles a massive step backwards in terms of making our cities and public spaces more people centred. However, I don't see any debate happening anywhere about the harmful effects of this. There seems no limit to the size of private motor vehicle you can own nor where and when you can drive it. If there is any debate, discussion going on on this topic in terms of policy, regulation etc it seems to have bypassed me. Anyone aware of any?

You have a point. They are cars though so same legislation as cars.
So there is Congestion charge, ulez etc in London.

Other than that, until there is a momentum charge or passenger number premium, that's all there is
Afaik

Could try SUVshaming though drivers likely won't give a shit

Hackney on street parking regs require the vehicle to fit in the lines? That's something.

A personal bugbear is the Ford Ranger, a ridiculous oversized double cab truck, although there's several similar competitor offerings.

These are apparently the result of successful lobbying by the auto industry to introduce favourable benefit in kind tax rates to those who use them as a company vehicle.
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/best-ofs/best-pick-up-trucks-why-you-should-consider-a-pick-up-as-your-next-company-car

As anyone who's been passed by one on a country lane will testify, they're really not suited to British roads.

My bugbear is the ubiquity of the massive Range Rover Discovery. The sheer volume they take up is obscene.

There was some chat about this recently (prompted by some direct action SUVshaming in Glasgow to coincide with COP26) but I forget which thread. Maybe In the news.

From here, and the following 20 odd pages
https://www.lfgss.com/comments/16266339

i’m wondering when the middle class shame will kick in and people start selling the huge behemoths for more becoming urban transport.

Wood burners have already flipped from must-have to heating source of shame.
“daddy why are we killing the planet with our people carrier? Harriet and Jonas in our class have a Honda E, why cant we have one?”
will probably be the tipping point.
although the real answer is ditch the car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtJECy7aHwc&ab_channel=NovaraMedia

I think they'll just flip to getting E-SUVs, which can take up just as much space and are as fatal but are more expensive, which is always nice.

And no one can hear them when they bulldozering you on the tarmac while walking or cycling …

as fatal

Maybe less fatal to those in the vicinity (less localised air pollution), more fatal to those involved in mining for battery minerals, and more fatal if one is accidentally accelerated at you at short range. Not sure how that balances out.

They are also more accelerative than the ice equivalent.
('ice' internal combustion engine).

And of course you pay more in VED for a big gas guzzler. But the difference isn't big enough to compensate for the damage and risk to society/planet from these machines.

You'll be reassured to hear that its FREE to park an electric Range Rover in Islington. Space in an Islington bike hanger is £107 a year...

Clearly going to be the case. You just have to look at how many parties are pushing electric cars as the "solution" to see that nothing is going to change quickly.

There's already a load of electric SUVs out there and loads more to come.

Exactly. Sell big second hand whatever ice people carrier to get big ayways u5 electric SUV. Because they need a big car.

There we go
https://www.lfgss.com/comments/16343458/

It's so bad in north/central London, endless tanks shuttling one or two people around.

Is there an effective/productive outlet for this thread's energy?

This argument is less novel than it appears. Within the ecological movement debates over the scope, forcefulness and value of direct action led to Sea Shepherd splitting from Greenpeace in 1977; the same debates have recurred across the left since the First International. As the crisis worsens and politicians temporise, Malm obviously expects more people to be attracted to direct action. While he praises increased participation, he also laments the attendant loss of political clarity, and identifies the need for a more confrontational movement that is still intent on capturing the political mainstream, one capable of reining in actions likely to alienate the majority. He argues that climate change is the ‘cumulative effect of action at the level of class’ and that this fact, rather than a generalised and undifferentiated sense of human responsibility, ought to be the criterion for action. To sceptical ears this might sound like a doomed attempt to square the circle, or nostalgia for political organisations that might once have made such judgments. It won’t reassure those fearful of a future racked by disruption and sabotage, but Malm’s tactical example is endearingly small-scale: he proposes a campaign against SUVs, whose tyres can be let down by wedging bits of gravel in the valves.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n22/james-butler/a-coal-mine-for-every-wildfire

One of the reasons cars have become so large with poor visibility and difficult entry/exit is that the pillars have been bulked up over the years to provide protection from rollovers. This is one of the reasons that cars now all have mandatory reversing cameras and tiny rear windows. I theorise that an unintended off shoot of this is that getting into small cars has become harder and more awkward, and the cars "feel" smaller inside, pushing people to buy giant wankmobiles.

In the end, demand for big, powerful cars is huge and growing, so unless there's legislation to decrease their sales it's unlikely the problem will get better.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/report-soaring-suv-sales-causing-car-emissions-rise

Is there an effective/productive outlet for this thread's energy?

Join local LCC group and write to councillors

Definitely safer

https://jalopnik.com/land-rover-discovery-sport-rolls-over-after-hitting-toy-1848269325

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/19/car-free-london-sadiq-khan-cut-traffic-health

Land Rover's ad campaign for the Evoque seems pretty dystopian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/20/cars-cities-land-rover-pollution-urban-spaces

It's amazing the different worlds that people live in, i.e. in the car consumer's mind this is all perfectly fine, harmless, aspirational stuff.