More than 1m cars sold in UK each year too big to fit typical parking space

39 comments

1. One of the best things the Gov could do is legislate a weight limit on cars. Force them to be smaller.

   Insurance goes down. Road wear goes down. Crash fatalities go down. Everyone is a winner.

2. I say this every time on SUV threads, but it’s become a bit of an arms race situation with cars.

   U.K. streets are in a pretty bad way, an SUV is better at dealing with potholes and badly maintained roads than your average low hatchback. I’m not surprised “normal” cars are becoming less popular.

3. >Large SUVs, which are either more than 1.8 metres wide or 4.8 metres long

   That’s my Ford Focus estate which is hardly a large car. It’s 1.825 x 4.6m

4. It’s an arms race – and without intervention, it will spiral out of control.

   We all pay the price: parking, congestion, potholes, and much worse safety, especially for pedestrian children.

   We need to tax by weight and footprint. Raise rates sharply at the top end, and make smaller cars cheaper. Emissions-based tax is obsolete in the age of hybrids and EVs.

5. These wide cars are destroying country roads, where the road edges are being flattened and potholed. Just my obseravtion.

6. We need to just ban oversized American beasts. If you let this shit take over your country, you will be atonished how much everything has to change to handle them. I’ve seen enough of them in my lifetime already. Just end it.

7. This isn’t just down to people in cities driving Chelsea tractors.

   Cars have gotten much larger overall. Increased safety measures meaning larger crumple zones for example.

   They’re not going to get smaller with more electric models being built either.

   It’s probably time to increase the minimum size of parking spaces.

8. It’s not just the width, it’s the height and power of their headlights. If there’s going to be legislation about anything involving these cars, not dazzling other drivers has to be top priority for me.

9. I drive a small city car and the size of some cars is insane. It’s not like they are necessary, most are used on the school run or to go and get a bag of shopping at the supermarket, but it does seem to have become a competition to outdo the other parent.

   Also, I have noticed that the size of a car has an almost direct correlation to the toxic attitude of the owner and their inability to park within the rules the rest of us adhere to.

10. It’s not your typical SUV type, but just seeing the [Size comparison ](https://imgur.com/a/BJGjKVI) of my 2012 Hatchback next to a larger car and small van just shows how massive they can get.

11. Don’t I know it! I have to park next to some of these monster trucks.

12. I’ve never understood the desire to have a car so big so you struggle to park it or pass through narrow streets. 

    Wouldn’t that just make driving so much more stressful?

13. Campaign for bigger car spaces starts now!

14. The worst part is it also feels like new car parks are getting smaller as well. Even average width saloons that have became wider over time due to extra safety and sound deadening (among just general increases in width). If you ever have to park in between two SUVs, you just have to accept you’re not getting out the car, or it’s getting smashed into by the other drivers doors.

15. The amount of People rocking about in those Volvo and AUDI SUV tank combos who can’t drive them as well, don’t pick such a large car if you can’t judge the distances.

16. I hate American disgustingly pointlessly oversized trucks so much.

    We really do not need to go down that route.

17. Hmm.. I suspect car parking spaces are getting narrower. A couple of months back a carpark I use fairly regularly in Selby was repainted and, since then it’s been difficult to find a place where I, and neighbouring cars, can get the doors open.

18. Ive started to just park as close as i can to them and block their door.

    Provided im within my lines they can go fuck themselves.

19. This is what happens in a world without Top Gear’s Cool Wall keeping SUVs Un-Cool and off the roads.

20. But how will I know who has the biggest cocks if everyone driving normal sized cars?

21. And, as it is begging in to appear, too heavy for 1970s built multi-storey car parks.

22. Living on a residential road and these stupid monster suvs take up so much parking space that you can never get a space. Tax the everloving shite out of them.

23. Wait until you see a kia ev9 – absolutely wild. One got stuck doing a 43 point turn outside our house the other day.

24. Try parking any recent car in Plymouth train station car park… had to take mine in there the other week. Was not pretty.

25. Seems like if the car is only 1m, you should be able to get several into a typical parking space.

26. Honestly the most shocking thing from this headline is that there’s more than a million of you lot buying a new car every year… how are you affording that?

27. Our road network as a whole is HOPELESSLY out of date anyway…

    Every road needs to be redone.

28. … and of course the kind of people who get these monstrous car are also the kind of people who park in two bays because it doesn’t fit, or drive over the curbs damaging those because they don’t fit. Nice people all around.

29. Supply & Demand, the note big cars we will have, the more compatible parkings we will get

30. This isn’t surprising, and isn’t an easy problem to solve.

    1. Government has been lax (likely on purpose) about updating the parking space standard in the face of ever growning sizes of cars globally

    2. The UK car market isn’t large enough to warrant dictating new standards on car sizes. The reality is that if Gov wants mandate buying smaller cars there will be significant push back from the car industry and consumers. Then expect to see a collapse in the available number of makes and models available for sale.

    To be fair this is a European problem as well, it’s just the car industry is focused on US and Chinese sales where the size of cars isn’t so much of an issue.

    Short term fix; change the standard (make it bigger), medium term fix tax larger SUVs into oblivion. Longer term fix; adjust car taxation for mileage and weight (post ICE sales ban)

31. Simple, double the parking rates for such vehicles.

    I go to a mall where there are limited spaces that are free for 3 hours. All the expensive cars wait there like beggars, to park there next if anyone leaves. If you can buy 75k car why cant you pay £3+ for two hours?

32. Parking spaces v much havent kept up with car sizes. Ive got a 20yr old mini and thats often quite tight. V much need to legislate space sizes instead of cramming in as many paid for parking spaces as possible that you cant actually get in and out of

33. The problem with these cars is they increase the damage to the roads, making potholes more prevalent and worse.

    Also they seem to be driven by people who just can’t deal with a car of that size, the amount of times I’ve seen them struggle with a simple manoeuvre is astounding.

34. Can’t wait to see my car tax on my hot hatch plummet from £190 to basically nothing if we migrate to weight based VED.

    My car is even Euro 6 compliant as it well

35. Amusing. Ford focus, Skoda Octavia, VW id3 are all massive, ridiculous cars that don’t belong on our roads and are impossible to park, apparently.

36. My new favourite frustration is trying to find a parking space in a busy supermarket car park. Eventually you end up finding one only to realise it’s not a free space, it’s one of these stupidly big ‘Pickup’ trucks that all the Alpha lords are now driving.

37. The amount of these that race around our local country roads, taking up the entire lane on blind bends and not even bothering to slow down is terrifying – we’ve had so many near misses, and their thought seems to be ‘we’ll be fine, our car is massive and can take a hit’ – ours isn’t, we have a 7 month old in the back, please stop treating the place like it’s Mario Kart

38. SUVs are a cancer on the roads. notwithstanding a lot of them are like an inverse TARDIS, with paradoxically little space inside despite their hulking size, the vast majority of people are doing no more in them than my mum managed with her little Mr Bean Mini 30 years ago.. which was shuttling 3 kids to school, weekly shopping and the odd trip out to the beach or something.

39. Had hell on getting my pickup out of a multistory in york last year. Had to reverse and pretty much 3 point turn to make a right turn down to the floor below. Fun

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