Freedom for Who? Monster Utes Are Stealing Our Streets

I’m not talking about hardworking tradie’s Utes that do real work. I’m talking about the new breed of “monster utes”. Flashy, American-style pickups like this one that are becoming more and more common in our suburbs and cities. They’re marketed as rugged and aspirational. But in our communities - where kids walk to school, older people shuffle to the shops, and cyclists hold their breath at intersections - they’re the opposite. They’re riskier, bulkier, and polluting. And they make our cities harder to move through.

Let’s start with the blunt truth: these vehicles kill differently. The physics is simple and grim. A low car tends to hit a pedestrian in the legs, often pitching the body onto the bonnet. A tall, box-shaped front end hits higher - chest, abdomen, head - where our vital organs live. Data from nearly 18,000 pedestrian crashes shows that Utes, SUVs and vans with bonnet heights over 1 metre are 45% more likely to cause fatalities than low-bonnet vehicles.  A 2024 peer-reviewed study found that every 10 cm increase in a vehicle’s front-end height increases pedestrian fatality risk by 22%.  This isn’t culture-war stuff; it’s geometry and biomechanics.

Then there’s the safety story these vehicles sell their owners. The illusion of being “safer” because you sit higher and feel more dominant. But that’s precisely the problem for everyone else outside the cabin. Larger, heavier vehicles create bigger consequences. And in Australia, where the road toll has been stubbornly rising and vulnerable road users are a growing share of deaths and serious injuries, rising imports of vehicles that increase lethality should set off alarm bells. In 2024, Australia recorded around 1,300 road deaths - the highest since 2012. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities were among the categories going the wrong way. If we’re serious about reversing this trend, we shouldn’t be normalising vehicles that are more dangerous in the kinds of crashes that happen on local streets.

The second issue is space - and space is something our cities never have enough of. A Dodge RAM 1500 is almost six metres long, and can be almost 2.5 metres wide with mirrors. Now compare that to the mundane, unglamorous reality of Australian parking and streets. In NSW, for example, an open car parking space must be at least 2.6 m wide by 5.4 m long.  You don’t need a tape measure to see the mismatch: a vehicle that’s longer than the bay is more likely to overhang footpaths and protrude into aisles; wider vehicles eat into neighbouring bays and narrow the space people have to open doors, load kids, or use mobility aids. Multiply that across shopping centres, kerbside parking, narrow inner-city streets and school drop-off zones and you get a daily, grinding loss of public space. Paid for by everyone, enjoyed by the few.

And yes, they contribute to congestion. Because “car bloat” changes how much traffic a lane can actually carry. A lane isn't one lane in practice if vehicles are longer, heavier, and leave bigger gaps in stop-start conditions. Bigger vehicles also make merging and lane changes more intimidating, which changes behaviour - more braking, less zipper merging, more hesitation. All of this makes traffic less efficient.

The third issue is emissions. And here the story is brutally straightforward: bigger and heavier vehicles burn more energy to do the same job. The International Energy Agency shows SUVs consume around 20% more fuel than medium-sized cars, and the global boom in SUVs is now a major driver of rising transport emissions.  Even if electrified, which almost all of them aren't, larger vehicles require more materials and bigger batteries to deliver the same range. This increases upstream impacts and demand for minerals and manufacturing energy.  In other words: you can’t “efficiency” your way out of a marketing trend built on size and weight. If we keep turning everyday transport into an arms race, we lose twice - in the atmosphere and in the liveability and safety of our streets.

So what should we do - beyond venting at the next one wedged across two parking spaces? We should treat monster utes the way we treat other things that impose public costs: regulate them, price them properly, and stop pretending they’re a neutral lifestyle choice.

That means: removing monster utes’ exemption from the luxury car tax; strengthening pedestrian safety standards and visibility requirements for all-vehicles; using weight and size in registration and parking pricing (if you take more space, you should pay more); and giving councils and shopping centres the confidence to set rules for where oversized vehicles can and can’t go. It means designing streets for people first. Lower speeds, safer crossings, and protected bike infrastructure - so a driver’s choice of a massive vehicle doesn't become everyone else’s daily hazard. And it means refusing the cultural narrative that “bigger” equals “better” when the evidence proves bigger equals deadlier.

Our streets and suburbs aren’t a showroom. They’re shared spaces - for kids, walkers, cyclists, elders, prams, wheelchairs, dogs, buses, delivery vans, and yes, ordinary cars and practical utes. Monster utes don’t belong in urban communities. Not because of taste, but because of harm.

And to finish, let’s be honest about the “freedom” argument. Monster-ute advocates will say regulation is an attack on personal freedom. But the real freedom issue is the one we all lose when a single person’s choice makes the street less safe to cross, harder to park on, more stressful to cycle, and more polluted to breathe. Getting these vehicles off our community streets doesn’t shrink freedom; it restores it - for everyone.

Gregory Andrews standing next to a Monster Ute.