Ultra-massive utes: bigger doesn’t mean better — driver safety should come first

Allen James Brown writes: We drive a Skoda Fabia, which we love for its agility and economy, and have always liked small cars (“The next pandemic: ultra-massive utes”). We once owned a Mazda 121 “bubble car” and on a road trip managed to squeeze in a tent, two folding chairs, a folding table, a camp stove, two blow-up beds, an esky and all our luggage. The car was a sensation at White Cliffs — no one had ever seen such a tiny vehicle in the outback. It’s nonsense that you need a big car. 

Australia must be a land of small dicks. A recent study showed the bigger the car, the smaller the dick. However, I’m not claiming to giantism in that department because of my small car preference. 

Tim Stephens writes: Too bloody right. These huge utes are an environmental disaster, a road hazard and a general bloody menace. I’m sure that IQ and vehicle size are negatively correlated, while positively correlated to arrogance and self-importance.

Let’s be smart and introduce a vehicle weight tax/incentive. People who must have a giant tank should pay an ever-increasing tax that’s used to reduce the price of smaller vehicles. Be a good way to help get smaller cars back on the road, save the environment and wipe the smirk off tank-drivers’ faces.

Roger Clifton writes: By buying a bigger car than yours, the Joneses are making sure that their bad driving kills your family rather than theirs. It’s an arms race. If we can regulate firearms on the basis of their firepower, we can surely regulate vehicles on the basis of their momentum.

Alison Rixon writes: Mine is a small fuel-efficient Saab that corners beautifully. It handles well, has lots of safety features and great acceleration with very little turbo lag, despite being built in 2007. So of course they’re not being manufactured anymore. Instead I am surrounded by gas-guzzling, pedestrian-killing, fat-arsed 4WDs (some of which don’t actually have four-wheel drive). They block the view, lumber up hills in the right-hand lane and obviously their male drivers are compensating for something… including poor driving skills.

Kathy Heyne writes: I traded my beloved little Honda Jazz for a Kia Sportage a few years ago because I no longer felt safe in a tiny car. I couldn’t see in traffic or going around corners because of all the big vehicles — especially the utes tradies drive. It was OK for the first year or so, but I’m now noticing the vehicles around me — once again those utes — are so much bigger that visibility is becoming a problem again. I hate it. I drive frail elderly individuals and people with disabilities, and I hate it. I don’t feel safe for any of us.

John Stanley Robert writes: This vicious trend won’t end well. Apart from the increasing death toll on the roads (which cost my daughter her first about-to-be born in a head-on crash with an errant 4WD 10 years ago), the sales promotions of such trucks depend on demonstrations of macho driving — as on beaches (bad for turtles, shore-nesting birds and much more) and on bush 4WD tracks, all very damaging to the environment.

If any further incentive was required to convince someone to take action after your report, it should be remembered that the generous “tradies ute” instant tax write-off was introduced by Abbott PM in his first budget — an initial play to win workers’ loyalty from Labor, and alongside the elimination of the Climate Council’s public-funded predecessor.

Have we learnt anything since?

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