While this is mostly about parking issues, the part that stood out most to me in this is:
A study published in the Journal of Safety Research last year found that children were eight times more likely to die when struck by an SUV than those struck by a passenger car.
Eight times! To me, that’s insane. Even if it were 50% that would be very bad, but this is 700% more!
There is a study out there that says controlling for weight, the shape of the vehicle is another significant factor for the likelihood of survivability of being ran over. Cars have a lower bumper and this allows for adults to roll on to the hood, children also have a higher chance of the same (but not much). SUVs, crossovers, and trucks have higher bumpers which gives them bigger blind spots and when hitting an adult, it’s extremely likely, that the victim is seeing the underside of the vehicle.
Taking a step back, vehicles have become heavier at a faster rate and this means that a new car today vs a 2000 car of the same model, going the same speed, the new car will deal much, much more damage due to physics. There’s just more mass.
It’s not even limited to hitting children (because we don’t think of the the children inside or outside of the car), it also affects the roads, parking garage, and bridges that cars use. Heavy vehicles do more damage to the infrastructure than lighter vehicles. EVs are almost always leaving out the fact that they are heavier, and will cause more damage to the road (and children).
In a perfect world, vehicle registration would be based on usage of the road, but that is difficult to come up with a way to enforce that. I think the next best thing would be to have an exponential/progressive registration fee based on weight. If you purchased a heavier vehicle, you are now responsible for contributing even more money to the roads due to your ludicrous destruction of it.