My blog, this past decade and a half, has been focused on writing and creativity. An argument about the monster trucks that are taking over our towns and cities in Australia might seem a departure from this theme. But no. First, my article is an example of creative self-expression, albeit non-fiction and based rigorously on the evidence, and second, the noise-pollution, air-pollution and visual-pollution made by these over-engineered juggernauts is antithetical to everyone’s creative needs and creative pursuits, as well being antithetical to our physical and mental health.
I haven’t written a blog in a while and it’s been because my own creative practice has been diverted from writing to Argentine tango dancing, teaching creative writing, learning collage and paper-making and writing occasional poems and articles for the local journal, Braidwood’s Changing Times, from which the following article comes.
Cars are the leading cause of death among Australian children. That’s only taking car crashes into consideration. Australian air quality, steadily worsening, is a cause of our high rates (c.f. OECD standards) of childhood asthma. The fine particulate matter from our diesel vehicles can be absorbed into the bloodstream, causing a ton of damage, including detrimentally affecting the brain.
Utes over $100,000 the fastest growing sales
The situation is worsening every day as the trend for ordinary passenger vehicles to be as big as and more polluting than trucks intensifies. Australians can’t get enough of these fuel-guzzling, double-barrelled, militarised tanks. A car executive at Toyota gleefully told journalist Sean Hanley (no relation) from Car Expert that it was the first time in decades he’d heard whistling and cheering at the announcement of the booming sales of the lucrative US-style pick-up trucks (what we’d call utes) and those that cost over $100,000 is the fastest grower in sales, rising by 65.4 per cent last year. These militarised utes are taking over the passenger vehicle market and are increasingly visible in our shopping centres and at schools.
Heavier vehicles need a lot more fuel to push all the extra weight. Until this year, Australia was one of the few countries in the world with no fuel standards but until now our country has been the global dumping ground for inferior, more polluting fuel and vehicles, which no one else would buy.
An arms race among Australian drivers
Scott Morrison’s tax incentive for tradies to fully write off the cost of expensive new utes goes some way to explain how we got here – the statistics also reveal that this allowed men on high incomes to disproportionately benefit. Labor let this lamentable program lapse last July. But as Jason Murphy writes in Crikey (24/5/24) ‘remaining deductions should be scrutinised to ensure taxpayers are not paying for unnecessary boys’-toys towing jet-skis more often than building supplies.’ He notes that the scale of investment in converting left-hand-drive American vehicles for Australian roads suggest car executives are not just relying on perpetually creative tax returns. An arms race among Australian drivers is generating its own momentum.
I’ve long observed that these hugely polluting car corporations are capturing both ends of the market (each equally deluded) – those who think that these monster trucks must be safer and those who think that they make their dicks look bigger.
Rising pedestrian death and injury rates
In the US, the home of the super-sized truck, pedestrian deaths recently hit their highest level in 41 years. We’re seeing a rise in pedestrian and cyclist deaths here too, alongside the rise in sales of these monster trucks. Causation hasn’t been proved but it looks worrying. It’s not just the weight and size of these huge cars – repeated studies have shown a tendency among most drivers of them to drive more aggressively.
Noise pollution also affects us and these juggernauts make more of it. Whether we’re aware of it or not, loud noise unleashes a cascade of damaging reactions. It vibrates the tiny bones in our ears, morphing into electrical signals that pass to our brain, triggering stress hormones and disrupting the pulse, heart rate and blood pressure. The University of Michigan has established that a noisier environment increases chances of people developing Alzheimer’s disease by 36 per cent.
Road deaths and injuries are accepted as an inevitable consequence of mass mobility but in this debate one factor is rarely cited: the increasing bulk of what we’re driving. The high centre of gravity makes these huge cars prone to rolling over and due to the light rear end when they don’t have concreting supplies or similar ballast weight, a slight tap to the rear quarter panels in a collision can easily send them out of control.
Their high bonnets create blind spots large enough to hide 11 children lined up – no, I haven’t lapsed into Roman numerals, that’s eleven. They’re about 45 per cent more likely to cause fatalities than normal cars. The higher and more angular the bonnet the greater the risk. Unlike their shorter, sloped counterparts, these towering hoods don’t just hit – they shove victims to the ground and under the vehicle.
Solutions
So what can we do? Electric models of SUVs are not a complete solution. As they increase in size so do their batteries, which can become lethal in the event of a crash. And they rely on mining lithium, cobalt and nickel, which have a detrimental climate impact. But while EV production is more carbon-intensive than that of petrol- and diesel-powered cars this difference quickly vanishes – a car with an internal combustion engine produces emissions over its lifetime; an EV does not. EVs are by far the lesser of the two evils.
And when you buy a new car, please resist the urge for a great diesel guzzling monster truck. Go the European way instead. The Europeans stymied the collective spiral of monster utes getting both ends of the market with stringent fuel-efficiency standards and related charges, crushing a post-GFC surge in American pick-up imports. It’s one reason you see so many tiny ‘smart’ cars on European streets.
In Japan children play in the streets and walk to school in complete safety. Japan has half Australia’s road toll and one-fifth of America’s. Street parking rules in Japan are stringent. Cars are much smaller. Taxes on cars are higher. Yes, political suicide; Australians feel about their cars the way Americans feel about their guns – but it’s time to ask ourselves: convenience and comparative cheapness or our children’s safety – what’s more important?
Stop blaming the victim
Advocates for safer streets are continually faced with attitudes that blame pedestrians and bike riders for the danger and death they face from car drivers. As journalist Benjamin Clark observes, ‘This threatens to cement giant hurtling hunks of metal as the dominant form of urban transport by rendering walking and cycling dangerous. Let’s hope the new fuel efficiency standards will be enough to slow the “cars-on-steroids” trend’. (Crikey, 20 July 2023) He goes on to write, ‘To my mind it should be prohibitively inconvenient and costly to cart your kids to and from kindergarten in a three-tonne truck.’
Many urban research experts claim that the best solution is retro-fitting streets to make them safe for people using smaller and lighter vehicles, as well as for cyclists and pedestrians. We need economic incentives to produce more sensible vehicles – there are hundreds of models still available and car marketers and salespeople need to turn back to those instead of irresponsibly pandering to those people who, for whatever motive, are attracted to driving monster trucks. Even traditionally car-centred places like Brussels are considering restrictions on SUVs and Paris voted for heavy parking charges on those using them. In New York there’s a proposal to rein them in through tax policies like weight-based registration fees.
There’s plenty we can do. We just need to have the political will to fight this destructive trend. A glance at our rising statistics of children killed or maimed by these monster trucks should strengthen that will.