espised by virtually everyone who doesn't drive one, loved by many who do, Sport Utility Vehicles are becoming a more and more divisive vehicle as the years roll by and the early, fact-less infatuation with them begins to fade as more and more information about the toll they take on our roads filters into the popular consciousness.  Personally I don't care much for them, and while I'd stop short of actually outlawing them, I would mandate some safety changes to them, such as lower bumpers for the safety of other drivers, and reinforced roofs for the protection of their occupants, frequently killed by the easy-to-roll-over vehicles.

I'd also require them to meet much stricter emissions standards, but I'd be fine with that for every type of car, when you get right down to it.

Newer additions are added on top of this page.

March 2, 2004

Just back from the Tahoe trip, and since I drove the whole way there and back in our rental Jeep Cherokee, I must comment on the experience.  It didn't drive poorly, to be honest.  I like sports cars, but in the past I'd driven an older model Toyota SUV, and one of those huge Suburbans at my grandparents', and a small U-haul truck during a couple of apartment moves, and none of those handled very well.  They steer when you turn the wheel, but a Suburban and U-Haul truck are boat-like; with the response very distant and floating from the steering wheel.  It's not a real pleasant experience.

The new Jeep Cherokee from Enterprise Rental was not bad though.  Nothing like the handling on my old Saturn SL-1, but it had a decent turning radius, I could park it in a regular parking space without any trouble, it did curves on the freeway pretty well even at 85MPH, and with four people and suitcases inside.  It had nice pick up also, a powerful motor, and I liked the half dozen power seat controls and other amenities.  I wouldn't want to drive one every day, but if I had a mid-sized SUV for the cargo/passenger space and only drove it once in a while, I wouldn't be too unhappy. FUH2 sympathies and all.

February 26, 2004

One thing that did come up in during the SF trip, is featured in the photo below. Before dad arrived last weekend, I had recently seen some a new blog post by Gregg Easterbrook, the guy who was fired from ESPN.com for saying things about Michael Eisner and Jews in general that he afterwards swore weren't meant to be anti-Semitic. Being as Disney owns ESPN, he chose poorly.

Anyway, he's a bit of a douche bag, but I sort of liked his fact-based (at least initially) ranting against SUVs, since it echoes my own thoughts, when I'm in a cynical mood.

Under federal law, SUVs and the misnamed "light" pickup trucks are allowed to emit far more pollution than regular cars, while being held to much lower miles-per-gallon standards or, as is the case for Godzilla SUVs like the Hummer, exempt from mileage requirements altogether. SUVs and pickup trucks are also more likely than regular cars to kill the occupants of other vehicles in a crash. But the people inside the SUVs are safer! That, at least, is what the SUV lobby is claiming as it pressures the Bush White House not to impose new mileage standards on SUVs and pickup trucks--or, as may happen, to impose only token changes. The SUV lobby's main--only--argument is that higher mileage standards for heavy vehicles would reduce safety for the lucky ones inside. "Many studies have pointed to the enhanced safety of sturdier, full-framed vehicles like [pickup] trucks and SUVs," Senator Trent Lott, an opponent of SUV MPG rules, said in a representative comment.

Actually, the National Academy of Sciences found in 2002, in a George W. Bush-requested study, that SUVs are safer for their occupants in some types of crashes, but are so much more likely than regular cars to cause rollover fatalities for their occupants that there exists no net safety benefit to those inside an SUV.

In comments on some blog that had a link to this post, I saw a link to the amusingly-named FUH2.com (Fuck You Hummer 2) site, and had to check it out. And I recommend it; the photos are funny, the ranting is funny, and the hate/love mail is funny, if frequently depressing for the evidently low IQs represented. The only pro-H2 argument I saw was, "You're just jealous since you can't afford one!" Usually expressed with lots of misspelled words.

Not a week after Malaya and I read that site and the feedback, and laughed and laughed, we met dad at his hotel in downtown SF, and while he was checking out he gave me the car keys to his rental and his suitcase to take out and load into the trunk. It was parked right across 8th Avenue from the Holiday Inn, so we jaywalked (easy on one-way streets) and put the suitcase in, and what should we see not 10 feet away, behind a chain link fence in a private parking lot?

No, I couldn't resist. Yes, Malaya egged me on. No, the owner wasn't present to threaten us by waving his deer rifle Birkenstock hiking boots.

I'll submit this photo to the FUH2.com site once I get around to it, and when you see it there you can enjoy your happy, inner glow.

June 24, 2003

truly glorious SUV article which I saw a link to from this blog, can be read here.

The article is about a book written on the psychology of SUV buyers/drivers, and it's pretty vicious, though in an amusing way. I'll be quoting from it extensively throughoutt the rest of this essay/blog/thing.

Unlike any other vehicle before it, the SUV is the car of choice for the nation's most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be.

According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others."

Once it moves (mostly) beyond the character assassination, the article goes on to discuss the safety issues of SUVs, in terms of their tank-like kill rates when they plow into other vehicles.

In their attempt to appear youthful and hip, SUV owners have filled the American highways with vehicles that exact a distinctly human cost, frequently killing innocent drivers who would have survived a collision with a lesser vehicle. Bradsher quotes auto execs who concede that the self-centered lifestyle of SUV buyers is apparent in "their willingness to endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety."

What's really interesting is that this is all bullshit.  The injury and death rate of SUV drivers and passengers is actually substantially higher than that of other cars.

The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars – 8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed. On top of that, SUV roofs are not reinforced to protect the occupants against rollover; nor does the government require them to be.

This LA Times article on SUV kill rates has more data, showing that they are the most dangerous vehicles to ride in (other than motorcycles), statistically speaking. 

And here's yet another article on SUV crash tests, this time side impact testing. The data shows that they are very dangerous to be hit from the side in or by, and strongly recommends head-height side impact air bags. I didn't even know there were such things.

So how can SUVs be so dangerous to ride in, when they're so big, and you know if you hit a real car with one, it's going to be demolished? It's all about the rollovers, which SUVs are very prone to, and which become more likely due to the reckless, seatbeltless, driving habits of so many SUV drivers.

Because of their vehicles' size and four-wheel drive, SUV drivers tend to overestimate their own security, which prompts many to drive like maniacs, particularly in inclement weather. And SUV drivers – ever image-conscious and overconfident – seem to hate seat belts as much as they love talking on their cell phones while driving. Bradsher reports that four-fifths of those killed in roll-overs were not belted in, even though 75 percent of the general driving population now buckles up regularly.

People dying due to not wearing their seatbelts are so perfectly Darwinian that I can hardly put my delight at stories about it into words.

So if you don't drive one are you okay?

While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21.

Well, it's good news all around then.

I suppose I should admit to a long-time dislike of SUVs. Gee, you never would have guessed from this update, would you? *cough*

They are slow, they are big, they block the view, they are dangerous to be around, and I'm not even getting into the US oil dependency their 10MPG fuel economy fosters.  It could very easily be made into a campaign issue: "Buying an SUV is like sending Osama (and other lurking Arabic terrorist types) a donation!"

On a more personal level, I've nearly been hit by other vehicles on the road maybe half a dozen times in the last 5 years, and all but one were SUVs.  The main problem is that they have huge blind spots to both sides and careless drivers, so if you are in a small sports car (like mine) you have to pretty much assume the Escalade next to you or in front of you has no idea you are there, and also assume that it's likely to change lanes at any time, without signaling.  I have avoided 4 sure accidents with SUVs in recent years, and every single time I literally dodged or swerved or braked to get out of the way of the behemoth.  And in only one case was I doing something speedy or sneaky that might have reasonable caused an average driver to not know I was there.  The other three I was just driving along at a reasonable speed, and the SUV suddenly decided to drive right where I had been, out of the ignorance of the driver.

The thing I can't answer is what would have happened if I hadn't been so alert and dodged them.  In three of the four of the examples I'm talking about here, we were moving at freeway speed, 70MPH or so.  And in all three of them I was slightly behind and to the side of the SUV.  So the truck would have hit me with their rear tire around the middle of my car, and likely the driver would have freaked out at the impact and jerked the wheel back the other way.  I'd think that it's a pretty safe bet at least one of the three would have over-corrected in their swerve and rolled over, eh?  And as we know from the above auto safety studies, SUVs tend to kill their occupants when they roll over, though I'd be more worried about me, and the other innocent people on the freeway who were suddenly trying to dodge a 3 ton SUV that was swerving sideways across the road, or rolling over in the middle of a four or five lane freeway.

To be honest, one of the three I didn't dodge, I was just merging to my left from a two lane exit ramp, and as I went over a lane I looked to the right and saw the SUV that was ahead of me and to my right had moved into the spot I'd just vacated maybe 1 second after I had.  If I'd had a passenger she could have reached out and knocked on the side door of the SUV.  And there's no way the SUV driver saw me and moved over once I did, they were way too close and fast for that.

The fourth incident occurred on city streets going about 35.  I was in the right lane and the SUV was ahead of me on the left.  A car in the SUVs lane slowed to turn left and the SUV swerved out from behind it without a glance and into my lane, and if I hadn't braked instantly, they would have run their rear tire into my front end and probably forced me right over into the parked cars to my immediate right.

That one is somewhat satisfying, since that one is the only time the SUV driver actually realized what they'd done, due to my screeching tires and honking horn, and half a mile later when I was ahead of him at a traffic light, he was making big apologetic arm gestures.  All of the other ones on the freeway remained entirely oblivious to the close call and potential fatal accident I'd just kept them out of.

My favorite of those was the woman in an SUV who was in the second from the right lane of a two lane exit.  She was doing about 60 and I was on her left, just before the exit, and doing about 75.  I couldn't easily get ahead of her, so I slowed a bit and got behind her, and then went over one more to the right, and began to accelerate to pass her.  Just as I got up next to her; she for no reason, with no signal, basically veered into the right lane, as if she thought in some way her car could merge into mine, amoeba-like.  I saw her coming and actually moved over to the shoulder, which was fortunately wide enough for that, a second or so before she would have crashed into me sideways.

After I braked and got behind her and traded an amazed look and a shrug with a driver to my left, who had been behind the SUV and seen the whole thing, I moved up behind the SUV, passing the other guy, and then passed the SUV on the left. Taking a look over, I could see a blond secretarial-looking woman, of course on a cell phone, and totally oblivious to me dodging her by swerving onto the fricking shoulder.

That one I just laughed off and laughed for a few more days, just thinking, "Typical SUV driver." every hour or two, and chuckling about it.  Might as well curse a dog for barking as an SUV for driving poorly, IMHO.

And before anyone gets all huffy, I realize that some SUV drivers are good drivers, and not all are reckless and clueless.  Those are the other SUVs out there, not yours.  You are an excellent driver, very safe, and you've never almost run over a smaller car that you didn't see in your cursory glance in your blindspotted sideview mirror.

January 23, 2003

This one is sort of funny.  I was talking to a friend about some political stuff, and how depressed we both were about recent events.  I thought to myself, "I might as well pop over to the Yahoo news and see what idiocy Bush has perpetrated today."  And the top story when I clicked had this headline.

Bush plan gives huge tax break to buyers of big SUVs

Jesus wept.  I didn't, but I did curse a bit.

Buying big, luxurious sport-utility vehicles could cost a lot less under the Bush administration's economic stimulus proposal, even though a Bush appointee blasted SUVs last week as dangerous fuel hogs.

White House spokesman Taylor Gross said Monday that the provision ''is not designed to favor one vehicle over another, but rather to allow small businesses to buy more equipment and to create more jobs.''

Not surprisingly, a cursory examination of the actual facts immediately exposes their words as lies.

Computers and other equipment do also get favorable treatment in the provision to help small businesses and the self-employed upgrade their hardware. But the language regarding vehicles limits the tax benefit to those with a gross vehicle weight rating of 6,000 pounds or more. That means full-size SUVs and pickups.

As a result, an accountant who'd do fine with a 30-mile-per-gallon compact sedan as a company car could be enticed into a big, 15-mpg SUV instead because of the deduction. Or a real estate agent about to buy a 20-mpg midsize SUV that doesn't qualify for the deduction might opt for a full-size SUV instead, because it does qualify.

I can not tell you how this disgusts me.  Well, I probably can, come to think of it, since that's pretty much what I do around here.

As we're about to go to war, primarily to obtain access to more petroleum, here Bush is trying to encourage more sales of gas-guzzling, (I hate that term, it's so cliché, but it's also so appropriate.) parking lot hogging, roll over prone dinosaur vehicles.  The automakers and oil companies of course love this.  Oil companies for obvious reasons, auto makers since they make most of their profit off of overpriced trucks and SUVs.  Lots of smaller cars they actually sell at a loss, while making $10k or $15k off of the base models of $40k SUVs.  Adding to the fuckery of this is the enormous and growing budget deficit Bush's rich tax-cut and spend policies have created, while plunging the economy into a recession.  And we're about to spend billions more on a war no one else on earth thinks is necessary, and even if they did, why would they come out and say it, when the stupid US is more than happy to foot the bill?

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.