TIL that cars in Europe have grown average 1.2cm longer every year since 2000
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/24/carspreading-vehicle-size-crash-deaths-studyOpen linkView original on lemmy.world311
Comments45https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/24/carspreading-vehicle-size-crash-deaths-studyOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Not only longer but also wider and taller… it’s an obesity pandemic that has blown over from the US.
Can someone prescribe some ozempic to these cars?
What are they feeding them?!
mcchickens
This just illustrates the importance of hiring a professional to trim back the cars periodically. You could do it yourself, but the heavy industrial equipment necessary for routine gardening like this is just too bulky and expensive for the average person to be able to use.
Not sure about the accuracy of this, my car is still the same length as it was ten years ago.
Mine got 8cm shorter when the rear bumper fell off. So, it's safer.
I don't think that's very typical
At least the front didn't fall off.
I imagine you driving.
Stop giving it junk food.
Mine is a smart car. I need a pill to make it grow into a suburban.
I have a car that hasn't grown any longer, but it has grown taller.
Does this mean cars have plate tectonics?
Cars do not grow. Don't listen to this guy. My car is the same size as when I bought it.
Don't you water it regularly?
Water? Not for AI datacenters? In this economy?
Sometimes it's not growing by itself. Don't put too much pressure on that issue and enjoy just the other aspects of it.
The length is bad but the 0.5cm extra width per year strikes me as much worse. There's a lot of room for longer vehicles than the average cars of yesteryear - vans and light trucks have always been around. But those vehicles tended to only be slightly wider, if at all, in order to fit into lanes on the road, parking spaces, through gateways and so on. Half a centimetre wider per year is insane.
I would hope countries will just stop approving cars as road legal if they are too wide to fit on the roads.
I do occasionally see the odd range rover in the Netherlands. It's always hilariously out of place, and of course does not fit in any single parking space here. But they have to drive around with a special license plate for import vehicles, apparently it's fine then.
How about the dumbshits that import Ram trucks there? Recently read an article about it. I dunno how any of you guys could drive our pickup trucks at all there.
There are loads here, and I immediately think that whoever's driving it is a bad person.
Where's "here"?
You can work it out from my other posts but I don't go around advertising it when I can help it...
Publicly downvoting someone for not announcing where they live is a hilarious way of telling everyone you have the emotional fortitude of a 9 year old.
Maybe you need to invite in China’s “belt and road” people to cinch in that extra width.
Some of this is safety equipment and more recently batteries and hybrid equipment, which takes up space. Some of this is simply design and aesthetics.
My hybrid Suzuki Ignis (ugliest car on the planet) is smaller than my Suzuki Swift, which is supposed to be a small car.
The Pontiac Aztec is uglier.
Beauty is in the eye of the SUV holder
The Aztec isn't even close to the ugliest car ever made. It's a meme at this point.
1.2 cm? You know which body parts grow much faster?
The hair!
😇
And nails
To be fair, people have been complaining that here are too many cars in the cities for a long time. By making the cars bigger you naturally decrease the number of cars per area!
If they're going to make these cars that grow longer every year, are they also going to build garages that get longer too? In my day, cars stayed the same length for the whole time you owned them. I suppose it's good for parents that have growing teenagers and need more leg room in the back.
A lot is extra safety features. It would be illegal to sell the original mini today.
Safety for occupants, not those outside
Not entirely, a lot of the required curves are for pedestrians. Anything curved has less internal volume.
I remember that my parents car still didn't have seat belts in the back when I was a kid...
Same, my father's car (Citroën GS) had no seat belt in the back...
Consumer appeal for bigger vehicles tracks with historical weight gain.
Also, the number of burglaries in new Hampshire is dropping as there are less and less kids named Johnny
It's called "American creep".
There are a lot more car brands in Europe than most regions so generalizations are a bit less useful. I wonder who the outliers would be?
Just like my dick
Liar.