Big cars, big problems

Do Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) Cause More Severe Injuries to Pedestrians and Cyclists than Passenger Cars, in the Case of a Crash? Findings from Great Britain, 2004-2023

Goodman, Edwards, Laverty, July 2025.

This study uses police-reported road crash data from Great Britain, 2004-2023, to conclude that being hit by an SUV increased the odds of fatality by 77% for children aged 0-18 years, and by 209% for children aged 0-9 years.

Read the full study here.

Ever-higher: the rise of bonnet height, and the case to cap it

Transport & Environment, June 2025.

Vehicle bonnet height is closely linked with the risk of death and serious injury in the event of a crash. Average bonnet heights across Europe are growing year-on-year. In the UK, average bonnet heights have increased from 76.9 cm in 2010 to 83.8 cm in 2024. Nearly half of cars sold in 2024 had bonnets at least 85 cm in height. 

Despite the clear danger, no regulation currently exists in UK or EU law to limit bonnet height for new cars. This report makes the case for change. 

Read the full study here. 

Are European countries steering drivers to go electric or sticking to polluting SUVs?

Transport & Environment, May 2025.

Four times more large (D and E segment) polluting SUVs are sold to private buyers in the UK than in France, and low taxes help explain why. Vehicle Excise Duty on new SUVs is as much as 20 times higher in some EU countries than in the UK, making the UK a tax haven for polluting, dangerous SUVs. 

Read the full briefing here.

Do sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light truck vehicles (LTVs) cause more severe injuries to pedestrians and cyclists than passenger cars in the case of a crash? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Goodman, Laverty, Tyndall and Edwards, April 2025.

An analysis of 24 studies from the US and EU concludes that SUVs raise the risk of pedestrian or cyclist fatality by 44% if struck by an SUV, rising to 82% for children. 

Read the full study here.

An investigation into the relationship between car weight and fatal collision rates in the UK

Carlson, Dadashzadeh, Ekmekci, March 2025.

People driving heavier cars are disproportionately involved in more fatal collisions, and the average car weight is increasing in the UK. Preliminary findings from a study of documented collisions in the UK from 2019-2023 find that as car weight increases, the number of fatal collisions per million cars rises, peaking at 26.2 for the heaviest cars (2001-2500kg). This trend is consistent for Car-Car and Car-Pedestrian collisions.

Read the full paper here.

YouGov public polling

Polling of 2,133 UK adults, of whom 1,404 were passenger car owners, conducted in January 2025, found that public attitudes towards larger vehicles lean towards the negative. For instance

• a majority of UK car owners (59%) agree that SUVs are not necessary in towns and cities, compared to just 20% that disagree.

• almost three times as many UK car owners (60%) agree that SUVs “are bought more as status symbols than for practical use” compared to those that disagree (21%).

• four times as many UK car owners agree (71%) that more SUVs “will make parking more difficult” compared to those that disagree (15%). 

Read more here. 

SUV toolkit for cities: options for defining and addressing ‘oversized vehicles’

Transport for Quality of Life, February 2025.

Many cities are implementing parking policies which charge the drivers of larger cars more, in order to discourage the use of these cars in our urban spaces. This report examines the advantages and disadvantages of using different metrics (i.e. weight, height, length, width) to define ‘oversized vehicles’ when designing such a parking charge tariff. 

Download the full toolkit here.

Vehicle height compounds dangers of speed for pedestrians

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, December 2024.

A US analysis of 202 crashed involving pedestrians aged 16 or over found that the front end height of a vehicle increases the risk of fatality and serious injury compared to a smaller car travelling at the same speed. The fatality risk of vehicles, like SUVs, with higher front ends increases faster as speed increases.

Read a summary of the results here.

Sports Utility Vehicles: A Public Health Model of Their Climate and Air Pollution Impacts in the United Kingdom

Dearman, Milner, Stewart, Leonardi, Thornes and Wilkinson, June 2023.

This paper analyses how the trend towards bigger SUVs is offsetting air quality gains from the electrification of cars more generally. The authors conclude that the overall impact of the electrification of transport can be ‘significantly improved by incentivising switching to smaller vehicles’.

Read the full study here

Impact of vehicle characteristics on the severity of injuries to car occupants and the opposing party

Nuyttens and Messaoud, September 2023.

Published in 2023 this study analyses Belgian road crash statistics to calculate the effect on road deaths and serious injuries of multiple vehicle characteristics, including vehicle weight and bonnet height. A 10 cm increase in bonnet height is found to increase the risk of fatal injuries for vulnerable road users by 27%. 

An increase in vehicle weight of 300 kg is found to reduce fatality risk for occupants by almost half, but raises that risk by 77% for occupants of another car (in the event of a car-car collision), and 28% for vulnerable road users.

Read the full study here.

Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedalcyclist injury severity

Edwards and Leonard, September 2022,

Using crash data from the US the authors conclude that children are eight times more likely to be killed when struck by an SUV compared to a regular car, and that SUVs are overrepresented in fatal collisions with pedestrians and cyclists in comparison to the share of total collisions involving an SUV.

Some of the results of this study have been superceded by more recent analyses from the UK, including those by Goodman et al. above.

Read the full study here.