Parliamentary hearings on Road Safety Strategy begin
The Transport Select Committee has begun its hearings on the Road Safety Strategy, published in January this year, following a public consultation on the strength, ambition and effectiveness of the Strategy.
The SUV Alliance responded to the Committee’s call for evidence ahead of the hearing. Our response is summarised below and can be read in full here. But let’s first take a look at what some other organisations had to say on the question of growing vehicle size.
What did others say?
On the matter of growing vehicle size, it wasn’t just the SUV Alliance that had something to say. Many respondents to the call for evidence made remarks about the need to address the road danger posed by carspreading.
Transport for London (TfL) said: “Government action is also needed to address the growing trend towards larger, heavier vehicles such as SUVs, which increases risk for people walking and cycling — especially children — and increases pressure on road space.“
Cycling UK said: “We want to see measures put in place which reduce the risk posed by these vehicles or make [larger cars and SUVs] less attractive to purchase and drive.”
The Road Safety Foundation said: “Increasing vehicle size and mass has serious implications for road safety… This creates a growing inequity: those outside large vehicles face significantly higher injury risk, even if overall occupant protection improves.”
PACTS (the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Transport Safety) said: “Maintaining those standards across the fleet is necessary as evidence from the US highlights the impact on pedestrian casualties when geometry controls for larger vehicles are not in place.”
Academics Anna Goodman, Anthony Laverty, Jamie Furlong, Rachel Aldred, Phil Edwards said: “The strategy’s treatment of vehicle size is currently much too limited given evidence, including from the UK, demonstrating that increasing vehicle size and weight are associated with more severe injuries to pedestrians and cyclists, especially to children.”
Transport Action Network said: “no consideration is given to how vehicle design can impact the safety of people walking, wheeling or cycling. Given the reduction in visibility with increasing numbers of ever growing SUVs on our streets, this should be a priority”
The Road Danger Reduction Forum said: “people driving larger vehicles - principally SUVs as opposed to more traditionally sized cars – should be seen to be more dangerous to other road users than when driving smaller cars.”
The SUV Alliance response
Passive vs Active safety
‘Active safety’ measures refer to technologies such as Automatic Emergency Braking and Lane Assist that make cars safer by reducing the risk of a collision. ‘Passive safety’ refers to measures that make cars safer in the event of a collision, for instance, crumble zones. The Road Safety Strategy prioritises active safety measures (Theme 2 is dedicated to this).
Whilst this is welcome, it ignores declining passive safety due to the growth in average car size and weight. For instance, speed limit assistance is an important active safety feature. Yet a 3-tonne SUV like the Land Rover Defender carries twice the kinetic energy as a 1.5-tonne Ford Fiesta travelling at equal speed, and is therefore more dangerous in the event of a collision. In this case it is the weight of the vehicle that matters more than the speed. Consequently, we urge the government to ensure passive safety is given equal weighting to active safety when exploring vehicle safety standards.
Our policy recommendations
Large Vehicle Levy
The government is advised to introduce a Large Vehicle Levy under which new cars are taxed - as part of first-year Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) - an additional £10 per kg over a minimum threshold of 1600kg kerb weight. This would ensure that common small cars like the Ford Fiesta are unaffected by the levy, whilst heavier cars like the Land Rover Defender pay their fair share.
UK car owners pay up to 20 times less tax on the heaviest cars compared to those in European nations. It is estimated that a Large Vehicle Levy could raise £1.72 billion annually for HM Treasury, funds which could be used to support social licensing of electric vehicles.
Child-centred vehicle safety testing
Raised bonnets common to many SUVs and pickups create blind spots for the vehicle driver. Despite this, high-bonneted cars are frequently awarded top safety ratings by the European New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP). Over the last 5 years of Euro NCAP ratings, new cars over 2000kg (which includes all large SUVs and pickup trucks) have, on average, received higher scores for pedestrian safety than less heavy cars. The Land Rover Defender, for instance, enjoys a 5-star safety rating from NCAP. This does not align with the most recent research on vehicle safety and risks misleading consumers who choose a vehicle based on its safety rating.
We urge the government to work with Euro NCAP to incorporate a “child visibility test” into their testing regime whereby the visibility to the car’s driver (assuming an average height female driver) of a child standing in front of the car’s bonnet is measured and under which cars performing poorly by this metric cannot be awarded top safety ratings.
Weight-based parking surcharge
In October 2025, Cardiff City Council became the first UK local authority to approve a weight-based parking policy on resident parking permits. The government is advised to work with the Department for Transport to ensure local authorities have access to reliable data linking vehicle registration to weight and other critical dimensions such as width and bonnet height as currently exists for CO2 emissions (via which policies such as emissions-based parking charges and low emissions zones are enforced).