Car widths increasing?

My father is looking for a new car, but is having the same difficulty I did namely width. The newer model of his current car is about 5 inches wider and although it will fit (just) in the garage he wouldn't be able to exit. In fact I've been looking around as well for him and it seems every new model in the 'Supermini' bracket is anywhere between 2 to 6 inches wider than mine and mine's wider than his current car.

This got me thinking so I conducted a non-rigorous test with the Ford Fiesta which has been manufactured for some time now and is considered a 'compact' car. It seems that on average each new model gains an extra inch in width.

So anyone living in an older house most likely has a garage constructed with older models in mind and are getting squeezed out, which also might explain the number of cars parked on drives and roads.

However there's also another side to this with regard to the width of roads in this country. A quick search reveals that the 'standard road width' is around 7m that is 3.5m per lane; now the cars I've been seeing are around 1.9m and they're considered small.

So as you don't want to drive in the gutter over the drains you need to leave at least half-a-metre out. Add on the 1.9m and call it 2.5m, assume the other lane is the same and that leaves a clearance of 2m between lanes, which is fine. But again that's for the small cars.

A random selection of new 'family' cars and MPVs shows up that they tend to have a width of a little over 2m so makes little difference in terms of width on a standard road, but how many roads are deemed to be standard?

From the TIA conducted on behalf of Tesco the widths of most of the roads in Stourport can be found.

High Street - 5.6m, although they call it one-lane it is like York Street two so 2.8m per lane.
York Street - 6.5m, but does that take into consideration the parking bays? 3.25m per lane
Vale Road - 9m, but that's three lanes. 3m per lane.
Lion Hill - 5.8m, two lanes 2.8m per lane.
Mitton Street - 7.4 - 5.5m, two lanes so with the variable width that's 3.7m - 2.75m per lane
and finally good old Gilgal - 5.5 - 4.35m, again two lanes to 2.75m - 2.175m

So driving through Stourport in a normal 2m width car and allowing for drains the maximum space between two cars would be 1.5m in York Street dropping to a crash in Gilgal unless you drive in the gutter in which case you're looking at a maximum gap of 30cm.

Gosh I wonder why people slow down in Gilgal?

Now a Ford Transit is 2.374m in width, add on a drain distance and that's as wide as some of our lanes.

Although I'm using Stourport roads here this applies to a lot of older roads around the country - vehicles appear to be getting wider while out roads stay the same width. From the C&U regulations (helpfully not available on line) it appears that the maximum width of a vehicle is 2.55m which was set in 1986.

We seem to be getting rather close to it.