Huge cars are a health hazard.
The Back Page drives a 10-year-old Ford Fiesta with dicey transmission and a stiff clutch.
Fi has clocked up less than 40,000km in her decade, but I’ll bet she’s still done more gnarly rural driving than half of the huge, gleaming 4WDs in this city.
Whether they’re being driven aggressively, parked appallingly or just getting stuck in the narrow inner-city streets where I live, they’re a bloody menace. And there seem to be more and more of them every day.
It doesn’t help that our government subsidises luxury utes (a phrase that should be an oxymoron) to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars a year by waiving luxury car tax for any vehicle that can carry stuff, whether or not it actually does, among other benefits and tax breaks.
A commentary in this week’s MJA Insight+ about the health hazards of our 4WD obsession contains some remarkable statistics: 700,000 SUVs were sold in Australia last year, and 83% of new Australian car sales this January were SUVs and light commercial vehicles (utes).
The health problems identified by the University of Melbourne authors fall into two categories, road trauma and greenhouse emissions. Death in the fast and slow lanes.
US data shows that for every 10,000 car crashes, the lightest category of passenger vehicle causes three deaths, medium-weight cars cause six and the heaviest cause 37.
Similarly, Victorian data shows that each extra tonne causes 32 more deaths per 10,000 crashes.
In Australia, 92% of journeys are by car and more than 72% of people rely on cars for daily trips, leading to a significant CO2 output.
Emissions rise sharply by car weight: the smallest cars emit 90g/km while the heaviest spew four times that. Given the average 12,000km driven, heavy 4WDs emit around five tonnes of CO2 per year.
Considering the full life cycle of the vehicle, those beasts generate over 14 tonnes compared to under five tonnes for smaller vehicles.
More immediately, heavier mass requires harder braking, which produces more harmful particles and worsening air pollution.
The international backlash against Tesla has been an absolute joy to behold. It’s heavily ironic that an electric vehicle should be the focus of loathing towards an unelected member of a climate change-denying White House that has kneecapped the Environmental Protection Authority.
But it does show the political heft that car consumers (OK, and some vandals) can bring when their sensibilities are offended.
It would be nice also to see some protest around the petrol-gargling tanks taking up our roads and for our government to stop using our money to encourage more of them.
Send electric story tips to penny@medicalrepublic.com.au.
