Why SUVs are bad news for children and the school run.

You’ve probably noticed it too: cars are getting bigger. Recent research backs up the theory - bonnet heights of cars are increasing by half a centimetre a year in Europe.

It’s a dangerous trend. High bonnets create a large blind spot, which means children up to the age of nine can be invisible to a driver of an SUV. You think the driver can see your child right in front of him, but this not the case with many of the SUVs on our streets today. SUVs pulling out of parking spots, crossings with crawling traffic, are just a few instances when children are directly in front of these vehicles and not seen. Increased bonnet sizes also means SUVs are more dangerous in a crash. Children hit by an SUV, rather than a normal car, are three times more likely to die.

It’s horrifying stuff, and if left unchecked could make our streets more dangerous for decades to come. The number of SUVs on our streets has increased from 3% to 30% in two decades. Projected trends are that SUVs will make up three-quarters of car sales by 2027. If this happens it will lock in road danger, air pollution, and car dominance - all things that reduce the chances of children being able to safely walk or cycle to school. 

And let us not forget that the majority of children in London are still walking and cycling to school. Our analysis of the National Travel Survey shows us that 75% of London primary school children walk cycle or take the bus to school and 90% of secondary pupils. That's well over 1 million children navigating the streets twice a day. With a 10 fold increase in the number of SUVs on our city streets in the last 20 years, encroaching on street space, blocking sight lines, increasing road danger and generating congestion - their school journeys are very different from when many of us walked to school.

We want the number of people buying SUVs to reduce. There are a lot of levers needed to achieve this from national action to local action. At a national level, an increase in vehicle excise duty on heavier cars and a revision of vehicle size regulation to limit bonnet height and car weight is needed. But local council action could be the catalyst to make this happen. Local councils have control over city parking levies and increasing these levies for heavier cars can send a clear message to manufacturers and consumers that these heavier and wider cars are not safe for our city streets. Early indications from Paris are that these measure is proving effective and it would be the catalyst for a national conversation and action to regulate these dangerous vehicles.

What you can do

We are campaigning with the Clean Cities Campaign, the SUV alliance and Mums for Lungs, amongst other groups to urge London councils to take action on SUVs.

For easy ways you can help raise awareness of the issue and a quick way to email your politicians click the button below.

Take Action to reverse Carspreading

The campaign so far..

In August we took part in multi-channel news coverage of the campaign, speaking to the BBC and other outlets on the dangers that SUVs are creating for children in the public realm.

In July we took a group of children from an array of local primary schools to Lambeth Town Hall for a deputation, where they asked the Transport cabinet lead, Councillor Rezina Chowdhury, to take a child’s perspective into account, when it comes to SUVs. Zayd Shaikh, aged 9, said;  “Big cars take up more space and that creates traffic jams in our small streets. I have asthma and these big cars and traffic jams create pollution, which makes my asthma worse. That means I can’t always breathe easily and need my inhaler, which I really don’t like.” Cllr Chowdhury promised; “We will commission a study in partnership with two inner London boroughs to understand the relationship between technical vehicle dimensions and road danger.” Read more about it here.

Earlier in the summer we took part in a launch event in West Dulwich that ran to highlight a new study looking at the relationship between higher bonnets and increased death rates when pedestrians are struck. This is because higher bonnets are more likely to hit adult vital organs and children’s heads. Read more about it here. 

In March we took part in the IBike London kidical mass bike ride, alongside hundreds of other worried parents who want councils and authorities to focus their attention on #carspreading. Read more about it here. 

We'll be continuing to campaign on SUVs and #carspreading, and will keep you posted here and on our social media pages.

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