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

Could be down to weight of an EV over an ICE, usually +500kg more.. and with most EV's being SUV style with mega range batteries it could be 1000kg more than a standard family ICE car…

So its 'massive' SUVs and not all SUVs. Now just need to define what is a massive SUV! For consistency we should also ruminate whether 'massive' MPVs, Van's, pick up trucks etc should be included in the same category

Was talking to a lad yesterday who had just bought a previous generation 5008. He has only one gripe really in that the 'wrap around dash left no room for his balls'😂

More and more EVs if matched with fewer and fewer ICE vehicles means significantly lower pollution levels, which means significantly lower health expenditures.

Yes that's absolutely ridiculous. Saw it yesterday coming down the M50, one guy with his phone in the holder driving and txtn, had a great view from my van, although he was driving a small car so any driver can be a complete fool no matter what they drive

Wait till you work out how helmet cameras work. 🤣🤣🤣

Spy shot, this is how he did it:

Do you need someone to explain the danger arising when the driver of a large heavy vehicle has no hands on the steering wheel and is a bit distracted?

The driver is a dangerous driver. He had no hands on the steering wheel of his large vehicle while driving past a cyclist in busy traffic.

Your logic seems to be that no one was killed, so it wasn't really that dangerous. You seem to have missed the point, and missed out how road deaths and injuries happen. It's a bit strange to have to spell it out, but if he keeps driving like this, there's a fair chance that he will hit someone. Given the size and weight of the vehicle he chooses to drive in rush hour traffic, there's a great chance that he will kill or injure someone than if he were driving a smaller, lighter vehicle.

The

large heavy vehicle

you encountered already pays motor tax based on weight, as do all commercial vehicles.

It's a horrid yoke altogether and the driver is a dangerous twat but it's just not nearly as heavy as you perceived it to be.

Road deaths are not accidents/collisions etc (although I would imagine if a collision resulted in a death then it would be counted as both but you get my point)

I've had some close passes and dangerous incidents which I have never reported because I know nothing will be done about them. There is a ton of near deaths that happen every day but are not reported.

We cannot go by only road deaths and say sure why worry about the incidents that didn't result in death. How many close passes have occurred whilst giving cyclists less then 1.5 metres that are not reported? Each one could have become one of those oh so rare deaths you bang on about

The weight and footprint of the

large heavy vehicle

is ballpark the same as a Ford Mondeo depending on exact spec, or a Renault Traffic which also comes as a crew cab if you want to keep it in the realm of goods vehicles.

If the bellend of a driver you captured on camera with his two hands on his phone had been driving either a Mondeo or a Renault Traffic, I'd wager this wouldn't have been the thread you'd have shared the picture on. You're blinded by the shape of the vehicle rather than the actual size and weight, just because there are some big **** off American vehicles that kind of look the same shape even though they're an order of magnitude bigger.

Roads are designed for the heaviest vehicles. If we're talking city streets, let's exclude arctics, so take an unladen double decker bus at 10 tonnes, the fourth power is 10,000 vs that Chinese piece of **** pickup at 1.7 tonnes unladen, the fourth power is 8.35, so the bus does approximately 1200 times the wear and tear on the roads, or to put it another way, if the road can carry a double decker bus at all, the wear and tear effects of a pickup like that are trivial.

Even dividing by the passenger carrying capacity for a full bus vs a single occupancy pickup, the fourth power wear and tear argument doesn't hold up in the way you think it does. If anything, taxing directly proportionally to weight would hit the pickup much harder relative to a double decker bus.

I'm totally on board with modal shifts to public transport, particularly in urban areas, it's the only way forward. Your general tone and hyperbolic statements aren't the way to get people on board with that shift.