Britain is facing an unusual crisis: carspreading. Our road vehicles are getting bigger as people buy more and more SUVs of increasing dimensions and weight. At the same time, our streets and parking places remain the same size. A study by the European Transport Safety Council found that in a collision between a modest-size SUV […]

It’s a nightmare situation on a highway: Your car hits a patch of ice and starts to skid. Unable to regain control, you panic as you veer toward the roadway’s edge. In emergencies like this, guardrails provide a failsafe. As explained in a federal memo, a guardrail will “deflect a vehicle back to the roadway [or] […]

Spurred on by rising sales of large SUVs, newly-sold passenger vehicles (i.e. cars) are getting one centimetre wider every 2 years (see figure 1 below). All the indications are that this trend will continue without regulatory action by European law-makers. The current EU maximum width applied to all vehicles, 255 cm, was enacted to limit the expansion of buses […]

Fears over safety as analysis by Which? shows ‘autobesity’ epidemic means cars getting wider and longer More than 150 car models are now too big to fit in average car parking spaces, according to analysis conducted by Which?. While the size of the standard parking bay has remained static for decades, cars have been growing […]

A review found that older buildings should either be strengthened or a vehicle weight limit of up to two-and-a-half tonnes imposed https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/05/electric-cars-too-heavy-old-multi-storey-car-parks/

Electric vehicles (EVs) cause twice as much stress on roads compared to petrol vehicles, potentially worsening the pothole crisis in the UK, according to a study. The research conducted by data journalists at The Telegraph revealed that the average EV exerts 2.24 times more stress on roads compared to a similar petrol vehicle and 1.95 times more stress than a diesel vehicle. […]