Road safety and active travel. Time to name the elephant in the room.
A recent Westminster Hall debate brought together MPs to debate the issue of road safety and active travel to school. Whilst those attending clearly recognised the barriers that traffic and road danger pose to people - especially young people - walking and cycling more, and praised the various schemes designed to boost active travel, what was missing was a clear identification of the problem.
All motorised traffic poses a risk to vulnerable road users, but it’s bigger, heavier SUVs that epitomise the problem of road danger.
Because of their weight and design, with characteristically higher bonnets, SUVs are more dangerous to vulnerable road users. Children are especially at risk, with an SUV 8 times more likely to kill a child in a crash, compared to a traditional small car.
Ironically, motivated by fears of road danger, many parents today choose to drive their children to school, often in the back of an SUV. This, of course, only adds to the problem, ensuring that the SUV arms race continues to escalate.
Children between the ages of 11 and 15 make up the majority of children killed or seriously injured on the road, with most casualties occurring during peak hours between 8-9am and 3-4pm.
Beyond road danger, SUVs contribute to urban air pollution. Fossil fueled SUVs emit fumes from their exhausts, but even electric SUVs cause pollution from tyre and brake wear. Again, because of SUVs’ larger weight, this particulate pollution can even be higher than that from a small petrol or diesel car.
A 2019 study found that children in London are exposed to 5 times more air pollution during the school run that at other times of the day.
The false promise of advertising
Why do many parents choose to ferry their children around in oversized SUVs today?
Part of the reason is SUV advertising. SUV ads used to centre on the off-road capabilities of the vehicle, showing it being driven up a mountain or through a stream.
Today, SUV ads are much more likely to feature families cruising through urban streets, sometimes with an explicit focus on safety. These recent ads for the Volvo EX90 tout the SUV as “the safest Volvo car ever made”.
The issue here is that the safety benefits of larger vehicles only apply to those inside the vehicle. Anyone outside is put at much greater risk, as mentioned above. This is conveniently not mentioned in the ads, of course.
For example, using the results of a 2024 study, we can compare the new Volvo EX90 SUV with the Volvo V60 estate car, The EX90 is approximately 75% more likely to kill a male pedestrian in a collision and 138% more likely to kill a female pedestrian due to the EX90’s extra 32 cm of bonnet height. The EX90’s safety features that automatically detect pedestrians and cyclists in the path of the car might reduce the probability of a crash, but this has to be weighed against the fact that when a crash occurs the outcome for the pedestrian or cyclist will be much worse.
What can be done?
Many councils are introducing school streets schemes that enable schools to close nearby roads to through-traffic at drop-off and pick-up times. These schemes are a great way to encourage active travel to school, clean up the air outside schools, and ensure children can enjoy car-free travel.
But children don’t only exist near schools, and access to safe active travel should not be limited to specific streets or routes. That’s why we want to see a reduction in SUV use across the board.
You can help by using this tool to write to your councillors asking them what steps they are taking to discourage unnecessarily large and dangerous SUVs from being driven around where you live.
Without action, SUVs could make up three-quarters of new car sales by 2027, putting any vision for a future of shared, accessible transport at risk.
We can enjoy safer and fairer streets, but not whilst those streets are dominated by SUVs.
Feature image: Crispin Hughes - Clean Cities - Climate Visuals.