George Upjohn vividly remembers his interaction with the driver of an SUV after a collision that happened while cycling in Sydney’s south.
“I had blood all over my shins and when I hobbled up and asked why she didn’t turn her head to check to her side before veering into my lane, she said she didn’t need to because the sensor in her car would have alerted her to me. She said I must have been at fault and rode into her,” the 32-year-old claims.
The former pilot turned rock-climbing coach has also had multiple near misses with SUVs while driving his small car and riding motorcycles. He says he has grown fearful of the larger vehicle’s bulkier bodies that block visibility, and height which makes their headlights “blinding” to those lower down.
Upjohn is dismayed at their ubiquity on the roads.
“They just don’t see me, they’re stupidly wide and tall and you know if they hit you [as a cyclist] your body takes the whole impact.”
But Upjohn finds himself on the wrong side of Australia’s latest car trend.
SUVs and huge utes have become the most popular vehicles in Australia, increasingly serving as the new family car. But experts are concerned their safety pitfalls could be making the nation’s roads deadlier.
In 2024, Australia’s enthusiasm for four-wheel drives and dual cab utes such as the Toyota RAV4 SUV and Ford Ranger over smaller cars such as the Toyota Corolla and Mazda 3 continued to flourish, with large cars accounting for nine of the top 10 most purchased vehicles of the year.
Of the 1,220,607 new vehicles sold in 2024, most were SUVs, with about 57% market share, an increase of 2.4% on the previous year. Light commercial vehicles – which includes utes – accounted for about 22% of sales.
Passenger cars – which covers sedans and hatchbacks – continued to slide in popularity, accounting for about 17% of purchases.
The trend is a remarkable flip from Australians’ vehicle preferences over the past decade, with the small cars and family sedans dominating the top 10 list in 2014.
Also in recent years, Australia has spectacularly failed at its mission of bringing down road deaths and serious injuries.
Hospitalisations each year from serious injuries caused by road incidents increased between 2012 and 2021 by 16.1%, to 39,505.
Fatalities have grown at a similar rate. No state or territory is on track to meet a goal set out by a 2021 national strategy to halve road deaths by 2030. Instead, deaths have increased by almost 19%.
The 1,300 deaths in 2024 – the highest since 2012 – capped off a four-year period of surging fatalities, marking a trend not recorded since the 1960s, before seatbelts were compulsory.
Zooming in on 2024’s data, a troubling trend emerged.
Driver and passenger deaths slightly decreased on the previous year but roads became far more deadly for other users.
Pedestrian deaths rose by 7.1% on the previous to 167, while cyclist deaths jumped 11.8% to 38. Motorcyclist deaths increased by 10.3% in a year to 278.
No experts point the finger solely at larger cars for worsening road fatalities in Australia, with risky behaviour from all road users also contributing to unsafe roads.
However, senior road academics say there is one key trend flying in the face of efforts to improve road safety: car bloat.
‘You have to expect more trauma’
The study of road trauma broadly focuses on two factors; changes in driver behaviour and exposure – in other words, how much driving is occurring.
“If you’re driving more dangerous cars more often, you have to expect more trauma,” Prof Stuart Newstead, the director of Monash University’s Accident Research Centre, said.
On one hand, Australians are driving more than they ever have, partly the result of a growing population and the revival of free movement after a Covid lull.
In the 2023-24 financial year, Australians drove just shy of 260bn kilometres, up from about 245bn kilometres in 2013-14, according to government estimates.
That overall jump in driving is considered a rise in exposure. Equally, the growing number of cyclists, and the related spike in delivery riders through urban areas, also comes under rising exposure.
On the other side of the equation, the risk profile of driving has also worsened, in large part driven by vehicle choice, Newstead said.
For decades, as advancements in car technology made vehicles safer, the benefits were shared for all road users. “But vehicle choice in recent years has been counterproductive, it’s offsetting all those safety gains,” Newstead said.
‘They think they’re invincible’
If trends continue, large SUVs and utes will, at some point, overtake sedans and hatchbacks as the most common vehicles in Australia.
Already, they have become standard sights at school drop-offs and pick-ups.
While larger vehicles boast decent safety ratings and can better protect their occupants in many situations, they are broadly less safe – for society as well as their drivers and passengers – in a handful of collision scenarios, as well as for a number of behavioural reasons.
This has been observed in the US, where larger vehicles have long been popular.
For each fatal crash that occupants of SUVs and pickup trucks avoid, at least 4.3 additional fatal crashes involving other road users occur, a 2004 University of California San Diego study found.
Much of the added danger that larger vehicles have brought to Australian roads has to do with speed.
A key benefit in the eyes of consumers is how sturdy larger cars are and the added safety and comfort they can provide, says Assoc Prof Paul Roberts, the deputy director of the Western Australian Centre for Road Safety Research at the University of Western Australia.
“People driving these vehicles are more likely to be speeding because it feels like they go smoother over the road at higher speeds compared with smaller cars. It’s easy to feel like you’re not speeding at all,” Roberts said. “These vehicles are a bad idea on urban roads.”
Roberts said industry research has shown that driving 65km/h where a 60km/h speed limit is designated doubles the risk of a collision that will lead to an injury. “People think that’s nothing [5km/h over] but we know it means you’re twice as likely to crash.”
The inclination for drivers of larger vehicles to comfortably cheat speed limits, in some cases unwittingly, is just one behavioural change observed.
Studies have also found SUV drivers are more likely to drive with one hand instead of two hands on the top half of the steering wheel – meaning they’re not observing the recommended “10 and 2” fashion – due to a lower level of perceived risk.
“Research has absolutely found that people who drive these much larger vehicles drove very differently because they think they were invincible,” Newstead said.
‘It’s just the laws of physics’
SUVs and dual-cab utes, with their towering heights, bulkier chassis and heavier masses, are a recipe for greater destruction, Newstead said.
Speed – and their proclivity to be driven faster – and overall height make larger vehicles far more likely to kill or cause serious injury when hitting pedestrians, cyclists, motorbikes and smaller cars.
In head-on collisions with pedestrians, cyclists and motorbikes, the front bumper and bonnet of these larger vehicles – which are higher off the ground – typically hit more vulnerable body parts.
Not only does this mean larger vehicles are more likely to collide with a pedestrian’s head or chest – and do so at a higher speed – it is more likely to force them under the car.
A study by the University of Hawaii of US data found that a 10cm increase in front-end height causes a 22% increase in pedestrian fatality risk, while another found that children involved in a fatal crash are eight times more likely to have been struck by an SUV than a standard car.
This contrasts with a sedan or hatchback, which is more likely to hit the lower body of a pedestrian, who is more likely to go over the bonnet or windscreen.
Heavier vehicles which are higher off the ground, coupled with the broad tendency to be travelling faster, means there is more energy being transferred during collisions.
The Ford Ranger, Australia’s most popular new car in 2024, weighs about 2,250kg and stands 1.85m tall, dwarfing a Toyota Corolla hatchback, the top car of 2014, which weighs about 1,360kg and is 1.46m tall. Meanwhile, US-style massive “pick-ups”, such as the Ford Raptor and Dodge Ram, can exceed 2m in height and near 3,000kg.
Adding to the issue has been a gradual but seemingly never-ending growth spurt in ute size. Beyond increasing their market share, utes have become taller, longer, wider and heavier. The laws of physics dictate this makes them more dangerous to those they collide with, with a heavier and higher centre of gravity.
In 2000, Toyota’s HiLux in a single cab (two-seater) version – the most popular ute at the time – was about 1.61m tall, 1.69m wide, 4.73m long and weighed just under 1,200kg.
In 2025, Toyota’s HiLux in its dual cab (five-seater) version – the most sold style currently – is about 1.8m tall, 1.87m wide, 5.32m long and weighs about 2,110kg – nearing double the most popular ute model from 25 years earlier.
“You’re managing a whole lot of mass here at speed, and all that energy has to go somewhere,” Newstead said. “It’s just the laws of physics, more mass and speed is going to wipe out a lot more.”
When colliding with a smaller vehicle with less mass, they can cause catastrophic damage. “If a Dodge Ram hits your Mazda 2, you’re going to come off quite badly,” Roberts said.
Newstead warns how this mentality can lead to an arms race to larger cars for those wanting to bolster their own safety.
However, with more SUVs and utes on the road, the more likely they are to be involved in crashes with each other – a far more damaging collision than two sedans driving into each other, as the higher centre of gravity of the larger cars makes them more likely to tip over.
Bumper height matching standards in recent decades, designed to better distribute force between smaller cars when hit by larger SUVs and utes, appear to have made side-on collisions somewhat safer but studies suggest they have had less benefit reducing danger in other scenarios posed by the increasingly heavier weight of larger vehicles – which have only become more populous on roads.
Conversely, if an SUV hits a fixed object such as a tree, the energy transfer that occurs when hitting a smaller car is not replicated, making it more dangerous for the occupants.
“We know that a four-wheel drive or ute, even a modern one, is the worst thing you can crash a tree into,” Newstead said.
To optimise our vehicle fleet to have the safest collisions “we should all be driving [Toyota] Camrys or other sedans”.
“The old [Ford] Falcons and [Holden] Commodores we used to drive were fantastic for collisions, as lower and longer bonneted vehicles are much safer,” Newstead said.
Line of sight
Taller cars impede visibility for their drivers as well as other road users.
Crucially, if a driver can’t make eye contact with a pedestrians, “they are going to drive as though they aren’t there”, Roberts said.
In Australia, a vehicle’s Ancap score is calculated by several safety factors, including vulnerable road user (such as pedestrians) protection, as well as how drivers and occupants fare.
However, Newstead identifies two major shortcomings of Australia’s system, having failed to adapt to the country’s love affair with large cars.
Firstly, the different body parts of that test dummies are thrown at align with the lower-off-the-ground cars, with the lower leg form coming up against the leading edge of the bonnet and head against the windscreen – which is not how pedestrians align with SUVs.
Additionally, the Ancap score is an overall one, whereby a poor result in pedestrian protection can be obscured by very good driver and occupant protection and safety assistance technology, which can boost the final rating.
In jurisdictions in Europe and Japan, a minimum safety score for pedestrian protection is required for a vehicle to be sold in market. No such minimums exist in Australia.
Newstead urged authorities to update Australia’s laws to mandate a minimum pedestrian and vulnerable road user safety score, as well as for testing protocols to better assess larger cars.
“Ancap doesn’t reflect the dynamic of how fleets interact on the roads,” he said.
Mother of two Peta Stamell echoes Newstead’s concerns. The Canberra mother, who has dwarfism and is 1.16m tall, said the proliferation of large SUVs has made walking around her neighbourhood feel considerably more dangerous for her and her children, Rowan, 3, and Avril, 11 months.
As she is unable to see the drivers in larger SUVs and utes, she worries they are unaware of her, citing two recent “near misses on roads with these huge cars” while at pedestrian crossings.
Stamell said she was “outraged” that Ancap testing hadn’t been updated to consider the influx of taller cars.
“It’s keeping me up at night,” she said. “I’m honestly really scared for my family’s safety.”
