It’s midnight on the edge of Clapham Common in early September. The streets are eerily quiet as a shadowy figure in black shirt, shorts and baseball cap emerges from the common. He is wearing a red face mask, his features, except for some blond locks, hidden from view.
Fully agree. SUVs aren’t bad because they’re a few percent bigger/heavier/safer/less efficient/… than other cars, they’re bad because they are cars.
Many discussions on SUVs in particular give the impression that a “normal” car is somehow the sane, efficient alternative, which just isn’t the case.
They are bad because they are cars, but in the realms of car usage, they are ultra bad because they are even bigger steel death machines.
A street filled with VW Golfs instead of Land rovers, still afforded the vast majority of space in town, still given priority at every turn and still transporting one or two people at a time, doesn’t move us much further forwards .
a normal car is a much more sane and efficient alternative, that might be where you are getting that idea.
Exactly this. There are some clear use cases for cars and even for SUVs (possibly only if you literally live or work on a large farm). There’s no case for driving an SUV in a city. It’s antisocial behaviour at best and actively threatening at worst!
Swapping land rovers for golf’s gets us practically nowhere
It makes the roads safer and that saves lives. It reduces pollution, saving more lives. It also saves space. That doesn’t save lives, granted, but it’s still a good thing.
If we accept any use cases for cars (and I do, personally), even if it’s primarily in the short to medium term while we build better urban infrastructure, then we should also advocate for those cars to be as small, as safe and as clean as possible.