Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Coming up, Lorangism talks with Zoe Long about Canada's obsession with SUVs and pickup trucks. With all the awareness of the climate crisis we face, you'd probably expect Canadians to be shifting their vehicle purchases to smaller cars. Unfortunately, we are not.
Speaker: In an article called The Rising Canadian Obsession with SUVs is Disrupting Our Climate Goals, the authors say the switch towards SUVs, pickups, and minivans has been counteracting our efforts at reducing emissions. The lead author of the article is Zoe Long. Zoe Long is a senior researcher and PhD student with the Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team at Simon Fraser University. And Zoe joins me now. Hello, Zoe. Hi, Lorraine.
Speaker: When I'm out riding my bike in Vancouver, I guess it's not my imagination that there are more and more SUVs and pickup trucks on the road. What do the numbers say about this trend to bigger vehicles?
Speaker: No, it's not your imagination at all. SUVs and pickups and vans are actually 80 % of new vehicle sales right now. And that's up from just over 50 % in 2010. So we've seen a huge rise in the overall share of vehicles that are SUVs today. It really is kind of surprising to me, but not surprising in terms of what I observe out there.
Speaker: Your article says that this is disrupting our climate goals. How does the increase in SUVs and these other large vehicles impact our attempts to reduce emissions?
Speaker: Well, because SUVs are bigger and they weigh more, they tend to be less fuel efficient. You need more fuel to drive around this bigger, more heavier vehicle. So as a result, on average, in Canada, SUVs emit about 30 % more greenhouse gas emissions relative to a smaller car. And in Canada, we actually have fuel economy standards that are
Speaker: requiring car makers to produce more fuel efficient cars. Unfortunately, these standards don't apply in the same way to SUVs and pickup trucks. So SUVs are not getting as fuel efficient as cars at the same rate over time. And actually, interestingly enough,
Speaker: Globally, in the previous decade, SUVs alone represented the second fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions globally. So they make up a huge proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. A few days ago, I did an image search on SUV for our social media and with the hope that I could find a picture that conveyed the impact of SUVs on the climate. But all I could find was
Speaker: beauty shots of SUVs perched in attractive natural environments, you know, on the edge of a cliff or an urban environment. What makes them such a draw for drivers?
Speaker: So the first point I'll say is we're not here to be critical or judgmental of people who buy SUVs. We're really just trying to explore, like you said, what draws people towards them and why? What are these motivations? How does this compare to the motivations of those who drive smaller vehicles? So this isn't about judgment. But what we did find is that SUV drivers say SUVs are more comfortable. They can use them to fit more stuff in them, like sports equipment,
Speaker: kids, pets, other cargo and passengers. People say that they use their SUV for accessing recreation, for driving in snowy or wet weather and that the SUV handles very well in these conditions. Someone I spoke to even mentioned that their SUV can navigate
Speaker: the broken pavement and potholes in Vancouver much better than a car. And I also spoke to a number of seniors who mentioned that their SUV is more comfortable to get in and out of because they don't have to stoop down as low. It's easier for them to load and unload and they feel that they can see the road in a better, more safe way. So there's lots of good reasons that people are attracted to them.
Speaker: Let's look at safety. What did you hear from SUV drivers and non -SUV drivers about that aspect of the vehicles that they wanted to purchase?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a really interesting one. So both the survey that we conducted and the focus groups that we conducted found that SUV drivers unequivocally perceive their vehicles as being safer than cars. People who drive SUVs say they feel more safe in an SUV. Some people speak about themselves being more safe as well as their passengers. And they also mentioned that SUVs
Speaker: are part of enhancing the overall safety of the transportation system. Some people also mentioned a sort of arms race on the roads where the ever increasing number of bigger vehicles on the roads adds pressure to have a larger vehicle so they can feel more safe and protected.
Speaker: So it seems that having lots of bigger vehicles on the road makes people feel unsafe and being in a big vehicle of their own helps them feel safer.
Speaker: Now, this is in total contrast to people who don't drive SUVs, like car drivers and non -drivers. We spoke to them as well, and they perceive SUVs as being very dangerous, especially people who tend to walk and bike often, even people in cars. They are more afraid of the bigger vehicles on the road and see them as reducing overall road safety.
Speaker: Well, how does this perception of SUVs being safer if you're the driver or you're taking passengers with the actual traffic safety with respect to SUVs? Yeah, good question. So the results I spoke about previously is all about perceptions, but what does the data, the science actually say? The studies have found that SUVs are more dangerous. They're more likely to be involved with
Speaker: serious injuries or fatalities in accidents. This is simply because they're bigger and heavier. So physics is not on the side of the SUV. So this highlights the difference between what we call active safety and passive safety. So passively, SUVs can protect their passengers well. If they are in an accident, the people inside might be okay. But in terms of active safety, so this refers to handling and braking and overall
Speaker: avoiding collisions, they're not as safe as cars. And when they are involved in an accident or collision, more serious injury or death is more likely to occur, especially to the vehicle that isn't an SUV. Yikes. I actually remember seeing a picture of a pile of kids, maybe 10 of them, in front of an SUV, just right in front of an SUV, and the driver could not see those kids.
Speaker: That's right. Because the SUVs are higher up off the ground, they tend to have a larger blind spot in front of their vehicle. I understand some of the factors why people choose to buy SUVs involve how other people may regard the purchase of the vehicle. What are these social influences?
Speaker: Yeah, that was a really interesting finding from this study. We found that social influence seems to play a very large role in this trend towards SUVs. We received very consistent results between our two methods, the survey and the focus groups.
Speaker: So in the focus groups, SUV drivers spoke about how SUVs are increasingly seen as the norm. They symbolize a certain status and they can be used to help people fit in. Some people spoke about how they feel judged by the car they drive.
Speaker: And the SUV actually helps them feel a sense of belonging and a sense of I'm successful because I could purchase an SUV. And in the survey, we found that these social norms were a very consistent predictor of people's intention to keep using an SUV. So the overall social pressure seems to play a large role.
Speaker: When I was a car owner, which was more than 15 years ago, now I use share cars, at some point I realized I would actually drive my car nine or 10 blocks to pick up a lemon or a lime or a carton of milk. Did people express a willingness to downsize if they begin to see smaller cars as a social good, as a way to fight climate change?
Speaker: So when we asked about that specifically in our survey, would you consider downsizing if 80 % of other vehicles on the road were cars or smaller vehicles? That didn't prompt a large proportion of people to say they would consider downsizing from an SUV, unfortunately. It seems that the social norm might be difficult to change at this point.
Speaker: What are some mechanisms that could work to influence the purchase of a vehicle towards a more environmental choice?
Speaker: So unsurprisingly, we found that the most motivating factors for helping people consider to downsize from an SUV to a smaller vehicle involved costs or price. So any conditions we threw at people that made an SUV more expensive relative to a car or a car cheaper relative to an SUV, that seemed to prompt
Speaker: a higher proportion of people to say they would consider downsizing. But really, we've found at most only around a third of people who said they plan to buy an SUV would consider downsizing to a smaller vehicle. But things like making parking more expensive for SUVs, having added purchase taxes or insurance costs for SUVs relative to cars seem to make a bigger difference.
Speaker: What would you recommend to people who want to put pressure on policymakers to counteract this obsession and this trend towards big cars?
Speaker: So I think the most important policy implication I can think of would be to just redesign the current fuel economy regulations that I spoke about previously. So right now, the fuel economy standards, they have been very effective at improving the fuel efficiency of smaller vehicles, but the way they're currently designed, SUVs and pickup trucks and larger vehicles,
Speaker: They're subject to less strict standards, meaning they don't have to reduce their fuel usage as quickly as smaller vehicles. So redesigning these standards so that they apply more fairly across vehicle sizes might help car companies use vehicle downsizing, increasing the provision of smaller vehicles to comply with those regulations.
Speaker: Well, it's been really good to talk with you this morning and thank you for bringing us up to speed on this issue. You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Zoe Long. Zoe is a senior researcher and PhD student with the Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team at Simon Fraser University. Her article, The Rising Obsession with SUVs is Disrupting Our Climate Goals, was written with John Axan and was published by The Conversation Canada at theconversation .com. I'm Lorraine Chisholm.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
