[Tom_77]

Interesting piece in The Guardian about SUVs.

[quote]

Sold as a means of escape from the concrete realities of the modern world, a symbol of individualism and the pioneer spirit, the SUV represents instead a uniform kind of selfishness, a collective indifference to community to which, alas, we are all more or less prone.

[/quote]

 

Topic

[mattw]

Skirting that strawman, here

Skirting that strawman, here’s a recent Belgian study.

SUVs and pickups make the roads less safe for car occupants, pedestrians and cyclists – Belgian study

[mattw]

No – they are shown to be

No – they are shown to be more dangerous, especially to other people, by studies.

[mattw]

I’ve argued for VED

I’ve argued for VED proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight since that is the same as damage done to the roads. It’s DVLA not Councils though.

That would leave a 2500kg SUV at about 1.66^4 x the VED on a normal 1500kg car, which is about 7.6x as high a VED.

So it would be something like £300-500 for a 1500kg car per annum, and £2300-£3800 for a 2500kg SUV per annum.

To me that feels about right. 

If someone can afford a £50-100k plank tank, they can afford £3k a year VED.

[mattw]

That’s quite an edge case,

That’s quite an edge case, and the alternative is not “no car” – it is a less weighty car of less use.

I think mopst people tanking around London or the Home Counties (or bits of the Home Counties transplanted elsewhere) tanking around in their 2-3 ton SUV behemoths don’t do any of that.

A traditional Subaru, Estate Car, or 4-wheel drive estate would do 99% of it for nearly everyone, and much of it far more successfully.

My family used to do nearly all of that in a Saab 95.

Does, for example, the serial drunk known as Katie Price need an SUV?

Personally I drive a Skoda Superb Estate because an SUV – apart from being bloated, dangerous, expensive to run and horribly overpriced – cannot carry decent length loads.

[mattw]

Some of those are over-heavy

Some of those are over-heavy imo, but some good examples.

[mattw]

Fuel economy levels have been

Fuel economy levels have been policed across the world since the early 1970s – we know how to do that.

Standards on new vehicles are relatively easy to impose – we have some of them now on eg emissions.

Then regulate using price – fuel excise duty is currently LOWER in CASH terms that it was in 2010. If we added say 30p per litre excise duty on to bring the price back in line with inflation, more economical vehicles would be incentivised. 

[mattw]

I don’t see any reason for

I don’t see any reason for motor vehicle numbers to need to increase.

We are already at 40 million, and can manage it if we choose.

It’s to do with making alternatives into realistic choices, and also about applying Pigou taxes to certain aspects of motoring. Places like London, Leicester, Nottingham and certain others are the lead to follow I suggest.

 

[Rome73]

You always could control your

You always could control your own roads. Also, how do you think you can influence the size of cars – without the EU doing the same? The largest manufacturer and exporter of vehicles on the planet is the EU. So if the EU say the vehicle is going to be the size of a tank – then a tank it is. The EU set the rules. The only way you can influence that is by being a rule maker not a rule taker. But then, ‘we want our country back blah, blah’ 

[Left_is_for_Losers]

So basically, we would live

So basically, we would live in a government controlled state where there may as well be only one nationalised motor company as all cars will be pretty much the same due to detailed legislation?

Minimum MPG numbers wont help – it’s how you drive a car that will. 

WFH? No way, people should be back in the office, and yes – you would need to subsidise 4 day firms to allow for the lost revenue. 

[Rendel Harris]

Good work mods, quickest

Good work mods, quickest disposal ever!

[BalladOfStruth]

Rendel Harris wrote:

Suspected as much, the posed illiteracy is a red flag in itself…

Well, he’s gone already.

[JLasTSR]

It was a Terracan which I
It was a Terracan which I bought with 49,000 miles on the clock for £3500 I had it for 130,000 miles but recently changed to a Discovery 2009 bought for £5000 it already has 135,000 miles on it, so I should get 50,000 miles out of it. It is not a pick up. I have had a couple of trys with pick ups but find them awkward to use the bed. maybe I am too short! I can use a trailer more effectively, the trailer is quite big so I can get about a 1-1.5 tonnes of hay on or about 2-2.5 tonnes of equipment and materials.

[Anonymous]

Nobody needs a SUV car,
Nobody needs a SUV car, especially in urban areas. The real sport utility vehicle is an electric cargo bike. Sport of cycling and utility of carrying everything you need! Cities and even suburbs would all be better off if the monster cars were outlawed and the cargo bikes were subsidised.

[wtjs]

IIRC they claimed to be a

IIRC they claimed to be a Dutch bike shop owner when using this one before!

I spotted him as a PBU when he first began this foolish imitation- educated Dutch English speakers are generally as ‘grammatical’ as we are- and I claim my £5

[BalladOfStruth]

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

So, how would that be policed! Minimum fuel economy? I’m all for good economy, but that is impossible to police. 

Easy – you set your guidelines on vehicle length/width, bumper height/bonnet height to be as pedestrian-friendly as possible (e.g. wipe out the plague of stupid crossovers that are just higher, heavier, and less economical for the sake of fashion, while providing zero benefits over a family hatchback). You set guidelines on maximum engine displacement, maximum power output (nobody needs a 600bph V8 in this country) and minimum manufacturers stated combined MPG, and then you just ban the import of, or new sale of anything that doesn’t comply.

Then, you have an approved list of towing and off roading vehicles that require an additional licence that can then be applied for if you can prove that you need them – this can be handled in a similar way to firearms licences so that you don’t price people who need them off the road (contrary to the beliefs of other commenters, £5,000 annual VEDs won’t get Range Rovers off the streets of London, they’ll just screw over people that live in remote rural areas that actually do need 4x4s, but aren’t rolling in cash).

Edit: Also – make WFH a legal right for any job role where it would be possible, and provide incentives and subsidies to any company willing to trial a 4-day week. Hey presto, a 20-30% reduction in rush-hour commuter traffic and a significant reduction in idiots who live and work in Birmingham buying Hilux’s purely because they think it makes them look cool.

[Author]

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