Geraldine Herbert

Yes, so what they're saying is that on average, new cars are adding just over a centimetre in length every year and about half a centimetre in height.

Now, if this trend was to continue, obviously it'll have huge impacts on you, as you said, on parking, on safety, on the amount of electricity we use.

And just to give you an example, David, if you take something like the Volkswagen Golf, right, that's a car that's been popular for decades.

And when it was first introduced in the 1970s, if you look at the current version, it's 18 centimetres wider and 26 centimetres longer.

Now, that might not seem like a lot, but if you put the two of them side by side, they're completely different cars.

So this is not just something that affects SUVs, though they seem to be the ones that always get the blame.

It's literally all cars are getting bigger.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the reason is people buy them, particularly SUVs, to feel safer and carmakers promote them as the safest way to travel and to transport your family.

But also buyers in general demand bigger space, even in normal sized cars.

Safety rules and extra technology also mean that cars have increased in size and also carmakers, obviously, bigger cars have higher profit margins and

at bigger price tags.

So, you know, carmakers are fueling this as well.

Yeah, I mean, this is probably the starkest data that they've come out with today.

And what they're saying is if right-sizing cars, as in if we took a step back and we nudged cars back to the kind of size they were a decade ago, you could save two and a half thousand lives by 2040.

So that, I mean, that is really, really stark.

Yeah, the other thing is with bonnets that high as well, it's just sheer visibility of being able to see.

I mean, they've got so high now that you actually won't see a small child in front of you.

So there's all sorts of blind spots being created as well.

The other thing that people don't consider, David, is the fact that the weight of the car also has an impact on if you have a collision with another car, the likelihood of passengers being killed.

the likelihood actually increases by 12% for every 500 kilos of difference between vehicles.