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SUV driver harrassing cyclists"Increasingly at risk of fatal injuries": Danger to cyclists posed by larger, heavier cars laid bare by new research
New large-scale analysis of more than 300,000 road collisions between 2017 and 2021 has detailed the extent to which heavier, larger vehicles are putting cyclists and pedestrians at an increased risk of suffering serious or fatal injuries in the case of a collision.
The research comes thanks to the Vias institute, formerly known as the Belgian Road Safety Institute, and saw the characteristics of vehicles involved in collisions analysed. Factors such as mass, height and age were noted alongside the severity of injuries sustained by the vehicle's occupants, and those suffered by occupants of any other vehicle involved, or pedestrians and cyclists.
The height of a car's bonnet was seen as one factor that can increase the risk of fatal injuries to vulnerable road users. A pedestrian or cyclist hit by a car whose bonnet is 90cm high was found to have a 30 per cent greater risk of fatal injuries than if they are hit by a vehicle whose bonnet is 10cm lower.
When the researchers looked at vehicle type there were also implications for cyclists, the risk of serious injury increasing by 90 per cent and the risk of fatal injuries increasing by almost 200 per cent when a pedestrian or cyclist is hit by a pick-up vehicle.
"Two-speed road safety"
Vias concluded that the increase in heavy, tall and powerful cars on the roads meant "two-speed road safety", whereby the risks to the larger vehicle's occupants and other road users is drastically different.
"On the one hand, passengers in these more robust vehicles are increasingly safer; on the other, vulnerable users and occupants of smaller cars (lower mass and power) are increasingly at risk of serious or fatal injuries," the study concludes, saying it is "essential" to slow down the increasing production of heavier cars.
"Of course, the increase in the mass of cars is partly explained by the massive presence of driving aids, but also by increased comfort, greater sound insulation and increasingly thick body pillars. This study clearly shows that it is essential to slow down this increase, to move towards a more homogeneous fleet and to better protect vulnerable users in the event of collision with cars," Vias says.
Disparity in weight leading to disparity in risk was also seen when looking at collisions involving two cars. In the case of a crash between a 1,600kg car and a 1,300kg car, the risk of fatal injuries decreases by 50 per cent for the occupants of the heaviest car, while it increases by almost 80 per cent for the occupants of the lighter car.
The research around taller bonnets posing more danger to cyclists backs up another study published in April of this year. Research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in the United States, found that SUVs' large front ends are more dangerous to cyclists than other cars.
The study found that crashes with SUVs resulted in 55 per cent more trauma and 63 per cent more head injuries than crashes with other cars, owing to taller front-end designs, the lead author suggesting that vehicles with taller front ends run down vulnerable road users, while other cars tend to vault collision victims over.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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81 comments
Ah, the Ford Thunder Mutilator in special edition metallic murder yellow. A thing of true beauty.
At least it's not in grey...
Was passed by a BMW yesterday, had it's rear lights on, maybe a feature of some DRLs, because without them it would have completely merged into the tarmac, so exact was the shade of grey...
Nice Pick up truck,
just think how many bikes I could transport up to the Yorkshire Dales. And annoy the locals trying to live their daily lives.
Another one thread troll.
If you bothered to pay any attention, you'd know what little space those things have.
Maybe the UK could embrace the French "voiture sans permis" idea and encourage more use of microcars. They probably do 99% of what 99% of drivers use their cars for. Nice and cheap, ULEZ compliant.
I've also heard them called "naughty boy" cars as it seems the French are much keener to hand down driving bans, which would also be no bad thing. No more arguments that you have to drive / exceptional hardship.
(plus I think the Citroen Ami is very cute)
Warning! There's a large small vehicle rabbithole looming!
You're right, but "it's more complicated". Yes - cars are frequently single occupancy in use and overwhelmingly low occupancy.
However I think people cling to the "possible for uncommon uses". So having the ability to occasionally cram 4+ people in. And - say half-a-dozen times per year - driving for more than an hour. And - perhaps once or twice - somehow stuffing in something bulky (a couple of bikes, a load of furniture).
That's ignoring "displaying status" as well - which I suspect extends much further than the common stereotypes.
It's just habit change - in many places you can rent cars or vans fairly easily. But habit change is often really difficult or expensive. Especially overcoming the idea of "yeah - I have to pay tons of money and mostly it's parked, BUT once I've done that it's there if I ever need to take 6 of us to the out-of-town hospital, carry several paintings in a rainstorm or move a sofa."
As someone who doesn't own a car and rents for occasional use at the weekend, the opening hours of car rental places are a serious limitation. Services like Zipcar can work well for shorter journeys, but for renting beyond a few hours they are prohibitively expensive.
I agree - UK car rental is by no means equivalent to owning. However if something is "normal" we accept the level of convenience and price - even if we grumble about it. That's just "how it is" or "what you do" (like owning a car).
I'm lucky in that when I've needed to rent it's been for a suitable length of time (days) and I've been reasonably near rental places with longer hours (city - with airport in cycleable distance).
Alternatively you could say I've chosen a life where I don't drive much and thus have only thought about renting a car when circumstances made it relatively easy / not crazy expensive.
I suppose we just wait until the feedback loop with the market redirects our collective behaviour.
It is interesting how renting a car inverts thinking on car use.
If I owned a car I would spend far more money overall, but driving would be at marginal cost. The incentive to not drive is therefore low. I could drive to a National Trust property (showing my age!) and it might cost me £10 in fuel.
However, when renting the cost is wholly incurred each time I drive, so the incentive to do so is much lower. Sure, I could still drive to a National Trust property but I don't want to spend £100 to do so.
The last time I was at my local Ikea, there were a couple of rental vans in the car park. These could be rented and unlocked using an app. No idea about cost but thought it was a good idea.
A Homebase here in Edinburgh for a while had a cargo box trike you could use - did so once partly for the novelty. Worked for me because there was an adjacent cycle path which took me near my flat.
After a few months this disappeared. Probably wasn't used often. IIRC I asked and someone said it had been damaged. Perhaps because no-one understood how to maintain it, and/or it was vandalised on a trip? Cargo bikes seem to attract attention - I've heard of a few places who started using these then gave up due to theft / damage.
And as someone who does own a (quite old) car which gets very little use and which I feel I should be able to do without, the economics of renting don't stack up. I'd love e.g. to hire an estate car for those few weeks a year when we take a load of stuff on holiday, and car club for the shorter trips - but when I did some rough calculations, it was more costly than keeping what I have.
I'm surprised by that, while I was awaiting repair of my car, I had to hire a car for the weekend to recover my daughter and her stuff from Uni at the other end of the country, I think it cost £60.
against annual insurance £500, servicing, £400, Car Tax £100, Mot £50, that's quite a few hire weekends before considering any unexpected repairs that come up.
Was it one of these ?
Last year my running costs were c. £1,120 (insurance £250, VED £170, and we had a heavy year of maintenance at ~£700).
When I looked (admittedly not exhaustively, and I'm sure better deals could be found) hiring an estate for our 2 week holiday was c.£1,000, and using a car club once a week for swimming lessons (the only other regular use our car gets) would have been c.£25 a week - so this occasional driver was already down before adding those occasional days out, tip trips etc.
No MOT then.
Do you have to pay for fuel on top of the £25 ?
I included MOT in the £700. No, fuel is included in the car club to be fair, but the fuel I would use on those trips is minimal - my last full tank lasted me 2 months!
Smaller cars will become more commonplace in a few years due to them being all some people can afford when sales of new ICE cars are banned, unless prices reduce significantly. The average small electric car is about the same as a large ICE family saloon.
Electric cars : the next (final?) gasp for the failed policy of mass car ownership - but still retaining all the wretched features of ICE cars, except the tailpipe emissions and possibly noise.
The oil industry will fight the UK ICE ban with all that it has, and on the track record of the past 100 years will probably prevail.
In a plea for habitat protection, Vets have confirmed that cases of colic and constipation among bears are "incredibly rare" if there is good access to large tracts of woodland where they can establish a territory.
The influx of pick-up trucks, fuelled by tax incentives by them being classified as vans, is particularly worrying. Trucks such as the Ford Ranger have very high bonnets, which not only increase lethality in a collision, but also significantly reduce forward visibility for the driver.
There should be a way of deescalating the size of vehicles. Too many people now think they need a large car to protect them from all the other large cars. Imagine being a cyclist ...oh wait we don't have to.
As I said below forcing bad drivers in to smaller cars would be a start. eg if you claim exceptional hardship in court because you need to get the kids to school you surely cannot claim that you need a Range Rover to do that.
The fundamental problem is that even laissez-faire government seem happy to go in to bat for the car industry, offering incentives and subsidies. In this day and age how many industries still have this type of relationship with government. This means that the car industry has far too much lobbying power and as a result a clear lack of impartiality of ministers.
I think forcing certain people out of large vehicles would be tricky. But you could either ban the vehicles from sale (or from certain areas) or introduce regulations limiting size/weight/bonnet height. Alternatively, you could tax the shit out of them.
Its not the size of the car, it's the driver who is at fault. They just have a bigger weapon at their disposal. The truth of it is, more needs to be done to improve driving standards with harder punishments for anyone who breaks the law or causes death or serious injury to other road users.
Wholly the wrong conclusion to draw.
Its explicitly saying the type of vehicle makes a difference. to put it more bluntly guns without safety catches will kill more people than guns with safety catches.
Its a manufacturer fail, not a driver fail.
Or if you want a car example. Its exactly the same reason why Bull bars are banned.
A good driver in a big vehicle is still a good driver. A bad driver in a small vehicle is still a bad driver. This is where the issue is. Remove bad drivers from the roads and the size of the vehicle becomes irrelevant
Not really, because there are still all of the incidents where the non-driver is at fault: the child that runs out across the road when they see a friend without looking, the cyclist who misjudged the amount of time they had to turn, the pedestrian looking at their phone instead of the traffic…they are all more likely to be killed or seriously injured by the larger vehicle in the same circumstances, regardless of fault or driver ability, the size of the vehicle is still very much relevant.
That sounds like victim blaming to me, until we develop teleportation there will be a need for motorised vehicles on the road, if children have not been trained to use the road correctly they should be supervised by a responsible adult, if a cyclist misjudges the sharpness of a corner they don't get a pass from the laws of physics and if you're staring at your phone instead of where you're going then eventually something is going to happen to you with or without motorists. The size of vehicle I drive is relevant to the maximum load I regularly carry with it, I can't afford a second smaller vehicle for when I travel with smaller/lighter loads and I'm not sure the environment could stand it if such things were economically possible.
I am sure you are responsible in your choice of vehicle and nobody, or hardly anybody, denies that some people need large vehicles. However, the size of some current vehicles has very little to do with their load carrying capacity and everything to do with ostentation. The Ford Ranger double cab, for example, has a load capacity of 1233 litres whereas the Renault Kangoo, which is much closer to an ordinary saloon in size and, crucially, front bumper height can take 2600 litres. Similarly people are driving around in enormous SUVs with one kid in the front and one in the back that could be fitted in a saloon just as comfortably. It's not large vehicles per se that people object to but unnecessarily large vehicles driven as status symbols.
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. And we're never going to be rid of all bad drivers so long as humans are behind the wheel.
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