The ever increasing size of cars will mean thousands more road deaths in the decades to come, a Brussels think tank has forecast.  

Children are especially at risk, the T&E study concludes, because they are smaller and less visible to drivers.

On The Claire Byrne Show, T&E spokesperson Lucien Mathieu described new cars as “relentlessly growing in size every year”. 

It all has significant implications for road safety and urban planning policies. 

“Over the past 25 years, the average size of new cars sold in Europe have grown in a straight linear line,” Mr Mathieu said. 

“Every year they get 1.2 centimetres longer; they also get half a centimetre higher.

“So, this is just the findings that we published today, but it complements previous work that we've done that also showed that they also get half a centimetre wider every year.” 

Brand new cars ready for sale. Picture by: Alamy.com.

Mr Mathieu added that the consistency of the results is “really striking” and has made Europe’s roads less safe than they would be otherwise. 

“Rising bonnet heights pose a particular risk to children because they're more often struck in the head or the chest - sometimes they can't even be visible to the driver,” he explained. 

“We quantified these findings and we showed that if the trend continues, if this ever bigger car size trend continues, we would see about 2,600 additional deaths by 2040 in Europe because of this trend.” 

Mr Mathieu continued that the increase in car size also has repercussions for urban planners, who have to design car parks with larger vehicles in mind. 

“The research shows that European cities are facing quite a threat in terms of urban space because of this trend towards larger SUVs, which eliminates vast numbers of parking spaces,” he said. 

“We calculated that across Europe, it would be up to 14% of on-street parking in European cities by 2040 that would be wiped out. 

“So for Dublin, this is an estimated loss of 1,700 to 2,700 spaces.”

Main image: A member of An Garda Síochaána places flowers given by the public near the scene of a crash. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie.