AUTONEWS

Campaign Group Seeks Your ‘Carspreading’ Photos To Tame Autobesity

A U.K. campaign group is urging members of the public to send in photos of wider-than-ever cars—a phenomenon Clean Cities Campaign calls “carspreading”—to lobby city leaders to make parking policies fairer by varying costs based on the size of a car.

“Big cars make out cities smaller,” says the campaign group.

“Once you’ve seen carspreading, you see it everywhere,” continues the webite for Clean Cities Campaign.

“Share your photos and captions on social media with #carspreading.”

Today’s BMW-built Mini is much wider than the British Motor Corporation’s 1959 original, and is also taller and longer. Other famous car models—such as the VW Beetle and the Ford Fiesta—have also increased markedly in size and weight.

Modern cars are larger partly because of airbags, crumple zones and air conditioning units, but also because consumers prefer larger motor vehicles—hence the success of Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs). The motor vehicle “arms race” has led to calls from motorists for road lanes to be widened and parking spaces to be enlarged.

Roads in most British cities are becoming more and more choked as wider motor cars struggle to squeeze past each other. There’s an epidemic of pedestrian-unfriendly “pavement parking”—wheels half up on the sidewalk—and tempers fray when wing mirrors are bashed as porkier cars pass each other.

Research from Transport & Environment (T&E) in 2022 found that “autobesity”—car bloat—is real, with many cars getting too big for British roads, exceeding the 180 centimeter minimum for on-street parking.

On average cars were found to be getting 1 centimeter wider every two years. Data compiled by the ICCT confirms the same trend in the two decades up to 2020.

More than half of new cars sold in 2023 were too wide for the minimum specified on-street parking space (180 centimeters) in major U.K. cities. Off-street parking is now a tight squeeze even for the average new car, while large luxury SUVs often make it impossible.

Measuring around 200 centimeters wide, large luxury SUVs leave very little space in cities and “carspreading” is piling yet more pressure on roads. Literally. Fatter cars are heavier cars. And heavier cars cause more highway damage.

Richard Hebditch, UK Director for T&E UK, said: “The trend of cars getting wider has been progressing for decades and that trend will continue until the U.K. sets stricter limits. Currently we allow new cars to be as wide as trucks. This has meant our roads are now home to big SUVs and American style pick-up trucks that are parking on our footpaths, endangering pedestrians and cyclists and making everyone else on our roads less safe.”

Paris voted to triple parking fees for SUVs in February 2024.

“Bigger cars take up a lot more space, but the cost of parking has stayed the same,” says Oliver Lord of the Clean Cities Campaign.

“City leaders should make parking policies fairer by varying costs based on the size of a car. At the national level, government should adjust taxes in favor of lighter and more appropriately sized cars. There should also be maximum width, length and height limits for new cars. Current regulations allow for cars to be built as wide as a truck.”

Reporter: Carlton Reid