An Australian city council is looking at ways to discourage people driving enormous SUVs and utes around, including potentially charging their owners more for parking.
The mayor of Yarra City Council, which covers suburbs in central and north Melbourne, says they are dangerous, burn through fossil fuels and are quite simply too big for the old city's winding, narrow streets.
"Yarra is a very old area of Melbourne, having developed over 100 years ago, so we've got lots of, like, really tiny little streets that were designed for people to walk, cycle or travel down them in a horse and buggy," Edward Crossland told Checkpoint on Wednesday.
"They're not big wide streets, and it makes it super-challenging when you have these huge vehicles trying to travel down them when there is literally no capacity for them."
He recounted seeing a Ram ute recently needing to do an eight-point turn, repeatedly reversing onto the footpath, after it got stuck down a dead-end street in Crenmore.
"That's the kind of thing that we're talking about here. They're posing huge challenges."
Parisians in February voted to triple the cost of parking for SUVs, citing similar problems. Crossland hoped Yarra would be the first council in Australia to crack down on oversized vehicles.
Studies have found pedestrians are more likely to die when hit by an SUV compared to normal-sized cars, and as the share of drivers in SUVs increase, so do pedestrian fatalities.
"Councillor Sophie Wade - the councillor who moved this note of motion - indicated, you know, she was walking past one the other day and it was shoulder height with her. She's approximately six foot tall (1.83m).
"These cars have very, very big blind spots. So if you're a small child, there is a very good chance that that vehicle is not going to see you in time."
Wade, a Green Party councillor said safety was her prime motivation.
"It's really a matter of one person's right to drive whatever they want trumping everyone else's right to [safety] on the street, and I don't think that's a compromise we should be willing to make."
A Land Rover Defender drives over an obstacle course in an exhibition hall. Photo: FEDERICO GAMBARINI / DPA / dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP
Crossland said he had never seen a tradie use one of the super-sized vehicles targeted by the proposal which "doesn't include standard SUVs like Mazda CX-7s or Nissan Patrols".
"We're talking about the really big ones here - the Rams and the Land Rover Defenders, that's what we're talking about… these are luxury vehicles we're talking about here. They're upwards of $100,000, so they're not the kind of SUVs that you'll see many tradies use. I haven't seen any used by tradies to date. Not to say that some don't, but I don't see it impacting them."
He said he drives a "little hatchback", but also cycles "whenever I can".
