150 cars too big for modern parking spaces

Not every one is able bodied though, the majority of people with injured body parts are suffering only temporary or intermittently so do not qualify for a blue badge. There have been many times in my life where contorting to get out of a car has proved quite difficult.

Pretty much everyone of pensionable age struggles to get out of a half open car door without inadvertently bumping paintwork against paintwork at least a few times a year.

The general conditioning of people in the UK is shocking.

Many of today's young people are going to be in terrible state by middle age.

Old people do not all need to have poor mobility and massive weight by virtue of age either.

Bending to put a child in a car seems to be a common concern of PHers, and a reason for buying an SUV. Beyond changing a 3 door to a 5 door car, we never gave it much thought when we had our first child back in 2010.

It does make me wonder how many people would struggle to get themself up from the floor.

You are just as likely to struggle getting out of a car when you are fit than if you are not.

Fit people tend to be active, try getting out of a car the day after playing a strenuous competitive football/rugby/name your sport match etc

The last thing you need is another car barely 20 inches away when you are trying to force aching body parts out of a car door.

Parking spaces are too small.

If all cars become the size of HGV tractor units, should all car park spaces and car parks expand to accommodate them?

Yes, obviously.

Somebody else pointed this out and it just makes my point even stronger. We have a small country and it's very highly populated.

It is not a simple consumer decision. Safety standards have pushed up car sizes massively and the average family car are big beasts these days. Polos and Fiestas are simply not going to work for everyone.

Car park spaces are in the main just a line of paint - draw 9 spaces instead of 10.

It stone-cold is a consumer choice; there's no burly men knocking on your door at 3am ready to frog-march you to a dealership - "wide car or shallow grave citizen, what will it be?" Many a 2-child family gets by in something like a Golf (a notional 610mm clearance, easy for all but the most powerfully built) and never gives it a second thought. Okay, a Golf won't handle more than 4 in comfort but again that's individual choice, vasectomies are covered on the NHS.

But "the dogs" (an extension of your consumer choices), but the bikes (ditto), but I want more refinement, power, towing capacity or a trim spec that's only available up-range (ditto, ditto, ditto & ditto.) These are all reasonable wants and typically a larger car is implied to realise them, but part of the buying decision is realising the QPQ that goes with it. I quite fancy an S-Class and might go that way in the next couple of new-car cycles, but I don't kid myself that the footprint of the thing will be quite frequently be a pain!

You'll not get much sympathy from the locals driving any of that filth down here.