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news
Deflated SUV in Primrose Hill via Tyre ExtinguishersTyre Extinguishers target SUVs on home turf of the ‘Chelsea Tractor’
Tyre Extinguishers, the direct action group calling for SUVs to be banned from cities, have struck again, targeting 30 vehicles in London’s upscale Cheyne Walk area in the district of the capital that gave 4x4s their ‘Chelsea Tractor’ nickname.
Members of the group, whom we spoke to last month for an episode of the road.cc Podcast, use dried lentils to deflate tyres of the vehicles to draw attention to their campaign.
They cite research which has found that the collective global emissions produced by SUVs would see the vehicles outranked by only five countries around the world in terms of the pollution they produce.
The group has also highlighted that within the UK, more Range Rovers are registered in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea than in any other local authority area, accounting for one in 10 cars there., and thatn across the country as a whole, three in four SUVs are registered to addresses in towns and cities.
Tyre Extinguishers spokesperson Marion Walker said: “These people live in the dead centre of London with access to copious amounts of public transport. There is no need to own a massive polluting SUV here.”
The group, which has no centralised structure and is active around the world, encourages people to get involved with its campaign by undertaking their own direct actions and leaving a leaflet that can be downloaded from their website to explain to owners of the vehicles why their tyres have been deflated and highlight the effect of SUVs on the planet.
It adds that SUVs are specifically targeted because:
• SUVs are a climate disaster
• SUVs cause air pollution
• SUVs are dangerous
• SUVs are unnecessary.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- Cyclo1964 0 sec ago
If horses with riders were as prevalent as cyclists I would be pretty certain what the outcome would be when it comes to the right wing press....
- marmotte27 8 min 37 sec ago
Dutch government: largely neoliberal and main parties currently negotiating coalition with fascists...
- john_smith 22 min 46 sec ago
Agreed. Starmer has been an absolutely terrible PM. He's obviously only in it for the money and has no interest whatsoever in serving the country....
- hawkinspeter 30 min 45 sec ago
https://boingboing.net/2024/06/16/pet-cow-named-clementina-is-jealous-of-her-moms-boyfriend.html...
- john_smith 37 min 40 sec ago
Your hear about helmets saving lives all the time? How many instances would that be say per year?
- chrisonabike 1 hour 29 min ago
Flat? Do yourself a favour and get yourself a mini-fridge.
- HLaB 1 hour 35 min ago
By that the judge is depressingly admiting they'll be out in under a year and a half for any sort of driving ban to kick in
- mike the bike 2 hours 8 min ago
I well remember the year, 1977 was it, when Perineum Pain won the Derby. I had a tenner on him and took a cab home, the whole fifty miles.
- quiff 3 hours 36 min ago
I'm not that keen on three abreast on the Embankment superhighway, but on a towpath?!
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123 comments
Guillotine, surely? Getting the pearls off would be difficult with a rope around their neck, but without a head.....
The guillotine did actually stand on a scaffold (French échafaud)...
Struggling to find any sympathy for people who live in RBKC and drive/own Range Rovers.
I'm now going to stop responding to comments on my original post and go and have a cup of tea in peace. Unfortunately it seems that there's quite a lot of support for vandalising people's property on this website which is a real shame.
Reading through the list of replies to my original post I can't help but think if anyone from Tyre Extinguishers was to read the comments on this article then they would take encouragement from it and feel emboldened to damage more cars. That is a real shame as we live in a society where law should provide order. Perhaps they may even go after all ICE vehicles that may well include yours. I will rest easy though knowing my EV is safe from it all.
And to think people used to say much the same thing about those maddening souls who thought women should be able to cast a vote.
I've just scrolled through the comments and there are three of the fifty-nine thus far that could be interpreted as offering qualified support for the Tyre Extinguishers' campaign. There are many correctly pointing out the selfishness and stupidity of large SUVs, but that's not supporting the actions of that particular group (as I don't). Guess it's easier to play the victim card by saying, untruthfully, that many on this site support vandalism rather than truthfully reflecting the comments by acknowledging that many/most believe large SUVs are selfish and unnecessary.
The thing is, we're in deep trouble with global heating. The law is not keeping up with what needs to happen, so it's not surprising if various forms of non-violent protest start happening.
Exactly. The people who respond to protests of this nature with "WhY dOn'T ThEy pRoTesT PeaCeFulLy!?!?" don't seem to realise that people have been peacfully protesting enviromental damage/climate change for more than 50 years now, and they've been totally ignored by the world at large. Is it any surprise that the methods employed by XR and similar groups are getting a little more... overt?
I'm not going to suggest that people rush out and start damaging particularly polluting cars - but I will say that if we, as a society, are siding with the people who are buying V8-powered, 3-tonne tanks when they live in a city with decent public transport, then the penny doesn't seem to have dropped for us yet.
I say this as a school teacher who talks to young children every day so believe me when I say that history is FULL of examples where protest and resistance are the only ways that change has been achieved.
Yet more uncritical coverage of this, rather unpleasant, group.
Have a look at the 'Tyre Extinguishers' Twitter feed and website if you want to know what this group is really about.
It's just greenwashing vandalism.
Greenwashing vandalism - it's a growing problem.
I had a look at their website - didn't seem appalling e.g. it's not immediately obvious they're neo-Nazis / a front for Tesla / being run by the Chinese government. Although that doesn't demonstrate much. I'm not a twitterer so can't speak for that. I'll need convincing about some of the claims made there though. And as many people have pointed out "SUV" can be a rather arbitrary and sometimes inaccurate proxy for "the worst polluting vehicles".
Ah - maybe this was the particularly offensive part (apart from incitement to do it)?
But also:
Having said all that if we're doing "global warming belt-tightening" it's definitely the rich who are the best target for a resource diet - we're also those who can most easily change. We? In global terms "rich polluter" actually includes much of the population of the UK - there's an uncomfortable truth.
If you think they are greenwashing, you don't understand the meaning of the term 'greenwashing'.
"A form of marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly."
Eg
We want to vandalise rich people's property.
*Apply greenwashing*
"SUVs are a climate disaster
• SUVs cause air pollution
• SUVs are dangerous
• SUVs are unnecessary."
Therefore we're going to vandalise rich people's property.
For the logic to flow you have to demonstrate your first assertion though e.g. show that "let's attack the rich via letting down their tyres" is the primary aim. Maybe that part was on Twitter?
For all I know that may be the hidden agenda. I just haven't seen that demonstrated anywhere. I guess that it's even likely that one or more people are doing this for that reason. They might have been doing that before there were "tyre extinguishers" too. It being a "decentralised group" it cuts both ways of course - so I suppose I'm asking about the people behind the website, that being their "face".
They clearly state on their website that they target "posh" areas.
They also gloat about targeting wealthy areas on their Twitter account.
There's obviously no environmental justification for such an approach thus revealing their ulterior motive.
Apart from the fact that the rich pollute much, much more than the poor; seems pretty obvious to me.
A rich person's SUV pollutes more than a poor persons SUV?
It takes up more road space?
Didn't think so.
Not sure that "proves" it exactly. Might be a front for the Maoist party of the UK, might be squabblesome malcontents, may be people who think that SUVs are OTT. I guess in Edinburgh (don't know London) they wouldn't find that many SUVs to target in Muirhouse or Wester Hailes but more in the "posher" areas of Edinburgh - makes sense for them to go to where there were more SUVs, no?
In the bigger picture environmental issues are actually inseperable from considerations of distribution of resources - wealth, broadly. Clearly people targetting other's property based on that property being a conspicuous symbol of wealth makes people immediately think of revolutions. Isn't some of the impetus for doing something about the climate here merely enlightened self-interest by us rich westerners to avoid them?
At least in the UK the longer term predictions are that yes, we'll flood more and have less certain weather but we won't desertify, lose all our (arable) land underwater. Crops will still grow here. Isn't the point as much about getting our act together voluntarily before the real poor kick off? Those in much of the southern hemisphere, southern Europe, the middle east - who will have even less fresh water / food / land to live on so migration would increase massively and violent political instability likely come a lot closer?
(Aside: does "poor SUV owner" even make sense? There's hire-purchase of course and I'm sure there are plenty who might consider themselves poor. Obviously it's a relative term... but I'd suggest anyone in the UK who can afford to keep one running is in global terms pretty rich.)
Of course logically we could say "but any such 'diet' change is impossible we'll always lose that battle to our own rich". Or even our own poor, because they can't get beyond being jealous of our own rich. Or just motorists in general [1] [2]. Or that we'd be better to invest in methods of helping the leaders of poor countries keep their own populations / regions in check. Or just impressing on them that they've got no chance of effectively getting anything from us that we don't give them - because we'll always win the battle.
I hope I haven't just answered my own questions there.
We're not talking in global terms in this instance.
I'd agree that on a global scale every single person in the UK is fabulously wealthy but Tyre Extinguishers are specifically targeting the richer areas of Europe.
SUVs made up 44% of European car sales last year so the idea that it's only the very wealthiest buying them is clearly false.
As I said before, there's no environmental justification for targeting SUVs in wealthy areas only.
I'd rather they were guerilla cycle lane builders ("but the poor people won't be able to get through! It'll delay emergency vehicles - and health and crime issues predominantly affect the poorest!"). Breaking things is easier than creating them mostly though.
Back to it then. I thought the issue of global heating (or whatever the preferred term) was ... global? Can you explain how one could act globally in this case then?
They do cite particulates and the other inconveniences and dangers from large vehicles on their website. So for that it would be fair to say that they were acting locally to address a local problem. For the "climate" part of it, it would be logical to act more widely. Maybe some kind of decentralised movement - so people didn't waste resources travelling to these actions - would be the logical way to go...?
Of course since greenhouse gases diffuse I suppose an apt choice would be for them to start photosynthesizing or - better - simply persuade others to change their habits. On which:
> SUVs made up 44% of European car sales last year so the idea that it's only the very wealthiest buying them is clearly false.
We're back to semantics ("very wealthiest") but then it seems this always was about that. ("very few people who can't afford SUVs are buying them" isn't surprising). That statistic is consistent with it indeed being the wealthiest globally. So this debate is about slicing and dicing of the categories of "wealthy" within the UK then - something we certainly love to do here. Personally I'm not sure about "poor SUV owners" but then "poor" is a relative term of course.
What are useful questions? "How can we persuade people to reduce some of their resource usage?" I'm pretty sure any "solutions" will need that unless we just wait until consequences hit us and change happens by fiat. Second - how do we get around people resisting change using the excuse that the wealthier (pick who you want - almost everyone can...) are more profligate than we are and it's not fair?
It seems there's a movement in the U.S. to paint crosswalks: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/04/06/how-to-paint-your-own-crosswalk-in-your-neighborhood-hypothetically/
https://crosswalksla.org/
However, LA has decided to remove the unauthorised painting: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/20/1100398406/la-removes-crosswalks-painted-secretive-group-promises-traffic-circle
It's an interesting approach as the U.S. junctions assign priority to pedestrians at them anyway, so the crosswalk painting is really just highlighting that fact. I believe that officials aren't best amused by them as they don't control the quality of the painting and paint used (hope it doesn't get slippery when wet).
Another vicious circle! As the width of the roads go up (I think the US averages rather wide ones - it's the home of the stroad) the time it takes for a pedestrian to cross goes up. That means more irritation for waiting drivers and temptation to blow through the signal. Also I suspect that this means that to keep "vehicle throughput" up the time between pedestrian cycles must be increased. So now everyone's vexed.
To try to move on the US has brought in "Leading Pedestrian Intervals" in some places. Not sure about the safety implications of that. I know that sometimes you can get somewhere by playing with traffic light patterns and phasing [1] [2] [3]. However always good to remind yourself that traffic lights are motor vehicle infra though...
It's clear this world is for spring-heeled Jack. For me the next move in this arms race is stilts.
You don't need stilts if you can jump well enough
If roughly half of all new cars are SUVs then that means a similar proportion of used cars are too.
Ergo SUVs aren't a problem that's exclusive to rich areas of the UK.
So why target rich areas?
If they also target hybrid and electric SUVs then CO2 emissions can't be their target either.
The PM 2.5 argument is ok but if that's your concern new EVs are probably going to be better than most old ICE cars as there'll be no exhaust particulate emissions and the regenerative braking eliminates a lot of the brake pad wear especially in a major city.
Targeting SUVs in rich areas makes little sense again. I'd imagine EV SUVs are far more common in rich areas than poor ones.
It's almost like the environmental aspect is just an excuse to vandalise the property of people they dislike/envy.
"Our chief motivation is envy, envy and dislike, dislike and envy - our two motivations are envy and dislike and a desire to bring down the capitalist system - Our three motivations are envy, dislike and a desire to bring down the capitalist system and a general concern about large vehicles. Our ... Four ... No... Amongst our motivations are ..."
i wasn't expecting that...
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