Study: Carspreading to Add 2,600 Extra Road Deaths by
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- Transport & Environment found cars sold in Europe have grown 1.2cm longer, 0.5cm taller, and 0.5cm wider each year on average since 2000 — a trend it calls "relentless carspreading" — even as average family sizes have fallen.
- T&E's modeling projects that if the trend continues to 2040, an extra 2,600 road users would die in crashes each year compared to a "right-sizing" scenario in which average car dimensions are brought back to 2015 levels, including 79 children.
- Cities would lose 8.5–14% of on-street parking by 2040, with London and Berlin each projected to lose about 100,000 parking spaces if historical growth rates continue unchecked.
- The extra resources needed to move larger vehicles would equal 100 million additional barrels of oil imports and 22.5 terawatt-hours of electricity annually — roughly the output of 1,500 offshore wind turbines, according to Brian Caulfield of Trinity College Dublin.
- T&E's safety projections rest on research showing a 10cm increase in bonnet height raises the risk of death for vulnerable road users by 27% (Belgium study) and raises child fatality risk by 81% (US study).
- Research shared exclusively with the Guardian suggests SUV buyers remain unmoved by warnings that their vehicles are more likely to kill pedestrians, undercutting consumer-pressure solutions.
- T&E recommends capping bonnet heights and vehicle widths, reshaping taxes to penalize larger cars, and tightening standards so drivers can see young children from the seat — policy moves Hannah Budnitz of the University of Oxford said would address what she called "several striking points of concern."
Why it matters: With car dimensions climbing steadily for 25 years, T&E's 2,600 extra projected annual deaths — 79 of them children — and 100,000 parking spaces lost per major city represent a concrete, reversible cost that bonnet-height caps and size-based tax reforms could address before the 2040 baseline locks in.
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