Australians are buying bigger cars in record numbers at the same time the national road toll has increased to levels not seen in years.
It’s not a coincidence.
Despite marked improvements in the number of deaths on Australian roads in the years leading up to the pandemic, the 2020s have played host to a noticeable and deadly U-turn.
In 2023, the road toll hit 1270: the highest number of people killed on the road since 2016, and the second-worst record of the last 11 years.
At the same time, the three best-selling cars were all dual-cab utes – big, heavy vehicles that, because of their size, will typically hit pedestrians or other drivers higher on their bodies (and closer to the head) than sedans or hatchbacks.
Newstead said there’s a clear link between the two, with the higher proportion of utes in Australia’s collective road fleet making it less safe for everyone.
“The safety performance of utes is problematic,” he said.
“It actually doesn’t provide any better protection for you as an occupant. People think it’s (safe) because it’s big and big and tough, but certainly the trauma burden it places on the rest of the community is disproportionately high.
“And so our predilection for wanting to buy those vehicles is not improving our safety performance.
“Some interesting work we did recently showed that if we replaced the entire vehicle fleet with commercial utes, we’d actually increase the road toll by about 25 per cent.
“Which is quite an alarming statistic.”
That isn’t to say utes are the only factor driving the increasing deaths.
The pandemic is playing a role – in part due to the subsequent rise in population, in part due to people steering clear of public transport, and in part due to what could be reasonably summarised as people driving badly.
