Cars in Europe are progressively getting larger, with negative effects on public space, safety and energy consumption: a British study explains why we should reverse the trend.
To the new travel-related words of this scorching summer of 2026 (coolcation, nocturism, whycation) that we have covered on our Instagram channel, another one should be added: carspreading. Let us explain. A comment published by the Guardian last July reignited a topic that is becoming central to the road safety debate in the United Kingdom: the steady growth in the size of vehicles on the road.
The phenomenon has a name we will need to learn: carspreading, a neologism we might render as an excessive enlargement, applying to cars the idea of "urban sprawl" — the English expression used to describe the uncontrolled expansion of large cities. The phenomenon has actually been under way for some time (we had previously described it as car gigantism), and it is not merely a feeling; rather, it is what the new report by Transport & Environment and Clean Cities describes as a structural change in Europe's car fleet.
According to the research, cars sold in the United Kingdom are widening by roughly one centimetre every two years, to the point where more than half of the cars currently on the market would no longer fit within the minimum parking spaces set by urban planning standards. The most striking case involves SUVs. In London there were around 80,000 of them in 2002; today the figure is approaching 800,000 — a tenfold increase in twenty years. At the national level, according to figures cited by the British newspaper, SUVs in cities rose from 3 per cent in 2002 to 30 per cent in 2023; today SUV and crossover registrations (the boundary between the two is increasingly blurred) account for roughly two thirds of all new registrations in the UK.
The point raised by the Guardian — and one that has, in truth, already entered the public debate in many countries — is that the dimensions of a vehicle (even an electric one) are not merely a matter of style or of buyer comfort: weight and size (as physics suggests…) directly affect safety and the potential consequences of a crash, as well as the occupation of public space, energy consumption and, more broadly, quality of life in cities. Take one example: the tall, boxy bonnets of SUVs can, in some cases (think of large American pick-up trucks, thankfully not so widespread here), reduce the driver's visibility and create dangerous blind spots that cameras and sensors (such as the ADAS driver-assistance systems) cannot always compensate for.
Beyond the physics already mentioned, epidemiological studies confirm the picture. Research into road casualties carried out in Great Britain covering the period between 2004 and 2023 shows that being struck by a SUV rather than a conventional car increases the risk of death by 14 per cent in adults and nearly doubles it in children, with the risk almost tripling for the youngest age group, between 0 and 9 years old. These are figures that the Vision Zero Action Plan — a non-profit initiative in the United States aimed at eliminating all traffic-related deaths and serious injuries while promoting safe, healthy and equitable mobility for all — cites when referring not just to SUVs but to all "oversize" vehicles as being more dangerous for other road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists.
To this is added a more practical, everyday issue that has been evident in our cities for years: larger vehicles take up more road space, can encroach on the space available to cyclists and two-wheeled vehicles, increase congestion and, more generally, complicate mobility in urban centres — where, moreover, the practical advantages of a large car (SUV or otherwise) are outweighed by the disadvantages. On this point, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has long been pushing a campaign to introduce a specific charge for large SUVs circulating in the capital, as part of a plan aimed at eliminating deaths and serious injuries on London's roads by 2041 — a proposal that the Conservative opposition has already dismissed as an "anti-car" measure.
The question of ever-growing car dimensions is clearly not a purely British issue. Rather, what the Guardian has captured is a problem that increasingly belongs to a European perspective, and one that should put us on guard against repeating the mistake made in the United States, where the growing dimensions of pick-up trucks and SUVs (driven, admittedly, by territories and spaces that are evidently very different) are now recognised as a structural risk factor for road safety.
According to a study by Cleancities (which has launched a campaign bearing the eloquent title #Mettiamociunfreno), things are no better elsewhere in Europe: if the trend continues, by 2040 European cities could lose between 8.5 and 14 per cent of on-street parking spaces, and Rome is cited as one of the cities most exposed to automobile pressure. The risk? Without regulatory intervention on vehicle weight, height and footprint, the trend towards ever-larger vehicles will continue, driven by the commercial strategies of many car manufacturers (who typically enjoy higher profit margins on larger, more powerful and more expensive vehicles) and by the sense of safety — often illusory — felt by those who drive SUVs. To the detriment, however, of all other road users.
