Prof Christian Brand, the emeritus professor in transport at Kellogg College,

This guy doesn’t even have a degree.

I really hope you are a troll lobbying for the car industry ... because a rando questioning the credential of an Oxford professor which we can verify with a single DuckDuckGo query reading "Professor Christian Brand is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist, physicist and geographer with over 25 years research experience in academic and consultancy environments." from the page of one of the most prestigious university in the World, for centuries, is really weird.

It doesn't mean though that appeal to authority is right and thus that whatever Prof Christian Brand writes is correct. It's not because he's a professor researching in the area of expertise of the paper that he's right... but his credentials are definitely on point.

Pretty sure they are scientists. It's a broad term as far as I know, and anyways these are (probably) smart people (judging by their titles/jobs) and what they are saying or concluding from data is just common sense: heavier car = more wear and tear on road surfaces.

Anyways: Are you saying it could be EVs too? That's probably likely to be causing some of this too, I think they are generally 500kg heavier than gas cars.

Another reason to add to the "EVS ARENT THE SOLUTION" pile?