Why do people drive unnecessarily large cars (AKA "SUVS")?

let's say bull bars were shown to double the chance of child fatality in an impact with a child; anyone who was opposing putting controls on them because 'driver behaviour is more important' would probably be laughed at.

or anyone saying 'they're good because consumer choice is good'.

it's quite simple; all other things being equal, the research we have to hand suggests kids are 82% more likely to die if struck by an SUV than by a 'normal' car.

but people keep bringing up the 'driver competence is more important' point - which does not address the extra danger seemingly imposed by SUVs.

but if driver competence is something we should be talking about, this is not good reading:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5599441/

TL:DR - drivers of SUVs were significantly more likely to exhibit behaviours of bad driving than non-SUV drivers (and the study is from Austria, not the states, lest the argument about the definition of an SUV crops up).

i don't know whether that's causation or correlation; but if the study is accurate - it means that either bad drivers buy SUVs (a scary enough thought if you consider that would mean that bad drivers are buying more dangerous cars); or driving an SUV makes drivers worse.

maybe it's the psychology of driving a beefier car; false sense of security, maybe, but at each of the three locations studied, each of the three markers of poor driving were worse in SUV drivers; not a single 'anomaly' where the 'normal' car drivers behaved worse on average.

you can accuse me of curtain twitching all you want. i haven't accused you - and have avoided doing so - of base motives, but i guess all is fair in love an war, eh?

SUVs are more dangerous. says the research.

SUVs are driven more dangerously. says the research.

but my concern about that is 'curtain twitching'.

In contrast, if risk-taking behavior is the main factor checking such cars more frequently by the police would be a more appropriate response

that was one of the pull quotes you liked the look of - (my emphasis) - so you agree with their sentiment that SUV drivers should be policed more rigorously than saloon car drivers?

FWIW, despite the main gist of the paper being about measuring the 'SUV effect' and how it differs between men and women, it showed the poor behaviour was worse on all three markers, for men, in SUVs. the biggest relative difference being mobile phone use; 2.9% for saloon car drivers and 5.2% for SUV drivers.

what am i proposing? good question. there's no easy answer.

i'd certainly like to see fewer oversized SUVs in urban areas, which is where they're most likely to be problematic. someone else suggested a stricter licencing system, which runs aground against the same problem any suggested solution would, which is how to define the difference between 'standard' and 'non-standard' cars.

no SUVs within 200m of a school at dropoff/pickup time (if that SUV definition could be agreed), maybe? given that many are more difficult to see children out of, coupled with them being more dangerous in such a collision, seems fair - many schools already have tried to create exclusion zones regarding car parking in general in this regard.

motor tax on private vehicles escalating with height could be more easy to define.

the 'tax on height' option would neatly sidestep how to define an SUV.