Focus of work
Cars are getting bigger; streets once home to hatchbacks are now dominated by large SUVs and 4x4s. More than half of new cars in the UK are too wide for urban parking spaces, and bigger cars means bigger risk, with large SUVs posing far more of a danger to vulnerable road users like children, pedestrians and cyclists.
The SUV Alliance is a UK-based coalition of 20 organisations focused on sustainable transport, road safety and environmental advocacy. Launched in early 2025, its mission is to counter the increasing prevalence of large, heavy and polluting SUVs on British roads, particularly in urban areas.
The SUV Alliance’s FIT-funded work aims to target the policy blindspots that have allowed surging vehicle size and the advertising that promotes larger vehicles, empowering local and national governments to take action. Specific activities undertaken include:
Policy engagement, including leveraging political contacts to support MP engagement through events and leading a grassroots-supported carspreading activation to support the local councils to introduce policies targeting large cars and SUVs.
Movement building, including convening the SUV Alliance, coordinating reactive campaigns to spread the message and challenge the normalisation of SUVs, including targeted complaints, and recruiting new organisations into the SUV Alliance.
Challenging SUV normalisation, including commissioning a public survey exploring the ‘motonormative’ effects of SUV advertising and marketing and perceptions of vehicle safety, the creation and dissemination of key digital assets challenging SUV normalisation and popularising measures to reduce SUV use, and coordinating a national ‘write to your MP’ digital action, building public pressure on MPs to support measures to tackle carspreading.
Impact
The SUV Alliance aims to become an umbrella for anti-SUV campaigning across the UK. It has developed a five-point manifesto for safer, fairer streets and aims to catalyse a movement against larger, heavier passenger vehicles.
Taking on SUVs means taking on car dominance as a whole. Streets with fewer SUVs are streets where people feel safer to walk, wheel and cycle. Streets with cleaner air and streets we can reimagine as spaces for community and nature.
Activities undertaken during the first year of FIT funding included:
- Incorporating ten organisations as members or allies
- Holding a Reversing Carspreading conference with over 70 participants.
- At the national level, carspreading was identified as a growing risk in the government’s Road Safety Strategy,
- At the local level, Cardiff council approved the UK’s first weight-based parking policy as part of its 10-year Parking Plan.
- A councillor briefing was published to show councils how they can act against the harms of larger cars and SUVs.