Pick-up sales increase in Europe, but protests over risks to the environment and the safety of road users are also rising
Sales of the Dodge RAM pick-up, the quintessential American pick-up truck, are increasing in Europe: +20% of vehicles registered in 2023. According to data from the European Environment Agency, 5,000 Dodge RAM vehicles will be registered in 2023, bringing the total number of such vehicles on European roads to around 20,000. However, the sale of these large private transport vehicles poses a problem, as we reported in one of our previous articles.
The new, increasingly larger cars are indeed a problem for cities, as they are too wide compared to the minimum parking space on the street in many European countries. According to research by Transport&Environment (T&E), among the 100 best-selling car models in 2023, 52 per cent are too wide for the minimum on-street parking space (180 cm) in major cities, including London, Paris and Rome. Even off-street parking spaces – the average width of which is 240 cm – are now too narrow for new cars. At around 200 cm wide, large luxury SUVs leave too little space for car occupants to get in and out of the vehicles. This is why, last February in Paris, the outcome of the referendum on special parking fees for SUVs caused a sensation; a proposal that received 54.6 per cent of the votes in favour.
The trend towards wider vehicles is thus reducing the road space available for other vehicles and cyclists, while parked cars further encroach on pavements, thus also endangering the safety of pedestrians and road users. Wider models have also made it possible to increase the height of vehicles even further, despite the fact that accident data show that a 10 cm increase in the height of vehicle fronts leads to a 30 per cent higher risk of death in collisions with pedestrians and cyclists. In the event of a collision, a pick-up truck has in fact almost three times more likely of killing a pedestrian or cyclist compared to a normal car, while the high bonnets of pick-up trucks put children, women and the elderly at even greater risk.
For this reason, the increase in large vehicle registrations on European roads has raised the ire of many, and a coalition of consumer, safety and environmental groups, including T&E, the European Transport Safety Council, the European Cyclists Federation the BEUC Consumer Federation, Clean Cities, Eurocities, POLIS and the International Federation of Pedestrians, have already written to the European Commission asking it to close the loophole that allows these vehicles, deemed too dangerous and highly polluting, to circulate on EU roads. *** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***
As T&E reports, the EU has strict vehicle standards to reduce road hazards and limit emissions. However, US pick-up trucks are not required to meet these standards because they are imported through a secondary channel called ‘Individual Vehicle Approval’, which allows vehicles to bypass the EU’s basic environmental and safety regulations for cars. Originally, this was intended for adapted or specialised ‘one-off’ vehicles, such as those for people with reduced mobility or for emergency services, but the system is now being used to import large numbers of pick-ups from the US. In particular, these vehicles do not have to comply with the 2019 EU General Safety Regulation (GSR), air pollution road tests or EU CO2 emission standards for cars and vans.
In fact, the CO2 emissions of the Dodge RAM vary between 300g and 900g per kilometre, about three to nine times higher than the average for normal cars, according to T&E. Mandatory safety features for all newly sold cars and vans from 7 July 2024 are not required in Dodge RAMs and other vehicles imported via VAT. According to T&E, therefore, the solution to the problem would be in the hands of EU legislators, while city authorities should set parking fees and tolls according to vehicle size and weight, so that large SUVs and luxury pick-ups pay more for using more space.
Source: www.transportenvironment.org/articles/sales-of-dangerous-us-pickup-trucks-up-20-in-europe
