Madonna King: Should Brisbane bring in a toll for oversized vehicles?

They are the most dangerous vehicles on our roads so is it time that oversized cars pay for it?

A poorly parked Dodge Ram 1500. Picture: Reddit

It’s been touted as a vehicle arms race; the sprint to own a super-sized SUV or a monster twin-cab ute.

And just as an arms race signals a potential for danger, so does this one.

Colossal cars intimidating school drop-off zones. Monster trucks, often with an undersized P Plate driver, owning three spots outside the coffee drive-through.

At suburban shopping centres and on tiny winding streets, they have become a menace to children, pedestrians, cyclists and the elderly.

In some inner city suburbs, oversized machines are being parked across residents’ driveways, because they won’t fit anywhere else.

Why not carry their toolbox on the back seat of a Fiat 500 or a Suzuki Swift?

Ego. Bullbars and tractor wheels and high seats that require some tiny folk to use a ladder to reach are compulsory accessories on these mammoth machines that cost more, hurt the environment more, and cause more accidents.

That’s not in dispute. Road safety experts and studies have shown that big vehicles increase the risk of driveway accidents, particularly involving toddlers. They also provide a bigger risk for pedestrians, and those in small cars.

Sunday Mail columnist Madonna King. Picture: David Clark

Actually, they are less safe for everyone - except those in the pick-up truck - with some studies showing a correlation between the popularity of these big cars and increased pedestrian fatalities.

It doesn’t stop there. These wider, heavier and higher machines impede access in shopping centres, cause more severe head injuries in collisions with cyclists, and increase gas house emissions.

But we continue to line up to buy them obsessively; so much so that they now nab every spot in top-selling car rankings.

I understand their value, outside busy metropolitan areas, across Queensland. But this is one policy where we should be giving back to our country cousins, and charge those city-dwellers who want to pretend they’re carrying a tray of hay, or supplies to a farm, kilometres from town.

The ease of ownership should be different in the city, and our public policy position should address that.

Our politicians, congratulating themselves, told use that the 50 cent fare in the city would help address cost-of-living pressures and the environment.

But how does that happen, if we are using the savings to pay off a huge SUV, or add an oversized bullbar?

Car parks are at a premium across Brisbane and SEQ.

And why is Standards Australia floating ideas like increasing the size of parking bays, which only pander to our big machine obsession? New car park requirements - even at 20 cm longer - doesn’t change behaviour; it just takes the lid off the lolly jar.

The effect on hospital parking, just as one example, could be dire - both in the number of bays, and the fees for those families who only have a ‘normal’ car.

In Queensland, we need to follow other councils and states and countries who have struggled with this same phenomenon.

The South Australian Government has announced that all new homes with two or more bedrooms must have at least two off-street parking spaces large enough to accommodate modern SUVs.

Increased parking fees are being considered by some interstate councils, for those with twin-cab utes and large SUVs. In some places overseas, fees are tripled if a vehicle is over an assigned weight.

RAM TRX ute at the Black Rock Motor Resort site. Picture: Thomas Wielecki

Separate commercial car parks, with bigger spaces and higher fees, are also on the Wishlist of some experts, as is increased registration costs, based on the size of the vehicle.

What about if we, in Queensland, considered a metropolitan tradie tax, or drew a line around Brisbane, prompting tolls for one-driver oversized SUVs, mini-vans, and enormous twin-cab utes? I was passed by eight twin cabs in two minutes on the Gateway on Thursday; all with a solo driver and an empty tray; imagine the revenue just in that stretch.

Or what if we demanded P Platers, who are struggling to reach the accelerator and peer over the dashboard simultaneously, undergo a paid driving course that explained - to some, not all - that the size of the machine doesn’t always mirror the size of anything else. And that prestige can be won in other ways.

Ironically, some buyers say their purchase is driven by safety; they want to feel safer with so many other big vehicles racing down the roads.

That’s understandable perhaps, but where does it stop? In five years, will we all be driving kids to school in ramped-up tractors or second-hand school buses - just to feel safe?

Some brave politician or policy-maker needs to call out this foolish mark of prestige as dangerous and unnecessary in city boundaries where the roads and car parks are already crowded enough.

And find a way to charge those who insist size matters with the proceeds going to the bush where long-distance travel means more than a morning run for a takeaway coffee.

Originally published as Madonna King: Should Brisbane bring in a toll for oversized vehicles?