Island Life: BP-Fuelled Rage
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slarty: absolutely not envy driven. I myself used to fancy a big Jag. It's the "I want to be SAFE (and screw the consequences for you)" angle to the urban SUV that gets me.
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If that was a serious consideration, you wouldn't use a car at all...
The marginal threat to others between you driving a, say, Echo vs. a Land Cruiser is in the realms of a rounding error.
Statistically far more significant is having full-time 4WD and ABS.
So if we were being rational, we'd be mounting campaigns against people driving old cars with no ABS!
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Rik,
This is topical:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10516643
While I feel for the two that lost their lives in this terrible accident it appears that the "nasty aggressive" SUV driver was just minding his own business when the careful driver of a nice small car crossed the centreline and hit the SUV.
Probably the magnetic pull of all that metal in the SUV, huh Lucy?
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I just think the best thing is for fuel prices to keep going up in line with scarcity.
Then people can *choose* if they want to sacrifice other things for the SUV (or indeed the suburban house, which is the other way to drive your fuel bills up).
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Marginal threat? Well sure. Any fairly small risk can double and look insignificant on the margin. On the other hand, looking at tables of stats for the risk to other drivers, like the one here, they don't look good in comparison.
I think 4WD is a red herring. It's not like it helps you to brake.
Hilariously, the Wikipedia page on SUV criticism led me to this study done in Wellington.
(There are 70 "criticism" pages on Wikipedia - a surprisingly low number. I note that no other vehicle class appears to merit its own criticism page...)
Jared Thomas and Darren Walton of the Opus behavioural sciences lab in Wellington, New Zealand, watched 1196 SUV and car drivers on motorways to see whether they drove with their hands at the "ten-minutes-to-two" position on the steering wheel - a sign of a safe, alert driver.
They found that SUV drivers were 55 per cent more likely to drive with only one hand on the top half of the wheel than drivers of regular cars (Transportation Research F, DOI: 10.1016/j.trf.2006.10.001). "Being in larger, taller vehicles, SUV drivers believe they are safer and possess a lower level of perceived risk than car drivers," says Thomas.
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PS. Sorry Stephen for my wild generalisation! I must remind myself that PA readers are a little above average when it comes to thoughtfulness and common decency.
And I broke my own rule twice - I never discuss driving with anyone in NZ. There's some funny deeply ingrained "right to drive" thing going on that makes even the most rational NZer completely unable to see the truth when it comes to driving. The best example of it is the strange inability to identify the fundamental flaw in having the left lane merge into the right when two lanes merge...
It reminds me of all those nice people you meet in the USA - welcoming, friendly, often surprising erudite... and believe in a big ghost in the sky who tells right from wrong, the fundamental rightness of electrocuting mentally ill people and carrying guns to shopping malls.
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Sorry, Stephen, I was being a bit brief.
What I was getting at was:
1. Evaluate the risk of an incident occurring through your choice of a car over another form of transport. A car is probably second only to a motorcycle I would guess, but the risk of something happening is pretty small.
2. Then evaluate the marginal increase in risk that results from (for want of a better term) the "opponent" in the incident driving, say, a Range Rover.
Now compare the TOTAL comparative risks between the two. Like I say, it'll be a rounding error.
And I agree about the 4WD around town, but like ABS it does help with avoidance. I guess I should fess up to being a (UK) Police trained driver, an ex-Rally driver and a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists. But I'm only basing my opinions on experience, not studies!
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I don't regret a drop of the Octane I've burnt in pursuit of pleasure, and I certainly don't begrudge anyone else having a good time. Reminds me of the sanctimonious attitude of the anti drink / drug / yoof whiners: as Douglas Adams pointed out (sort of) I'm sure it's basically that the whingers are pissed off that other people seem to be having more fun than them.
I don't really think the two things are comparable - if someone chooses to get high or OD or drink too many beers, it doesn't really have much impact on me personally if I don't know them. But if someone chooses to drive "a bit quick", or aggressively in a SUV, or be a boy racer and I happen to be on the road then yes, it might have quite an impact on me. There is fun that doesn't hurt anyone but yourself, and then there is fun that takes out innocent people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time no matter what car the various parties are driving.
I would be very interested to know if there has been any research done into how the type of car a person chooses reflects their driving style and attitude towards others on the road and how this might factor into accident statistics. While SUVs seem to attract a fairly diverse drivership, cars like Commodores seem to be driven by a very specific demographic with a very common driving style. Are certain types of car represented more in accidents than others?
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A S,
I think the rhetoric against the boring old 4wd that is coming out on this thread has very little to do with reality. In this thread, a number of quite good factual points have been made about why things may not be as black and white as people might like, and the 4wd might not be the planet killer that everyone wants it to be.
There does seem to be some fairly widely held opinions about how SUV drivers are objectionable for various reasons. I'd suggest that if the situation is simply that there is some sort of widespread dislike of the 4wd due to perceptions around the sorts of people who drive them, then just say so, and be clear that it is the owner, not the vehicle that is the issue. Disentangling the two might help drive the discussion to a useful point no-one has got to yet.
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Disentangling the two might help drive the discussion to a useful point no-one has got to yet.
there is baggage for sure. one often wonders whether the owners of such cars know how they are perceived. there is a chap around these parts who is seen often driving a hummer. i bet when he drives it he feels like John Wayne. yet whenever I see him I think just the opposite [to put it politely....].
but....
But examine only the fatal crashes and a different picture emerges. In 2001, 19.5 per cent of all fatal road crashes involved rollovers, and 35.2 per cent of SUV-related fatal crashes involved rollovers.
And in terms of fatalities from all types of crash, SUVs are slightly more unsafe than passenger cars. In 1999, for every 100,000 registered vehicles in the US, there were 16.4 fatalities in passenger cars, and 17.8 in SUVs.
What is more, the aggressive design of SUVs ensures passenger cars come off worst in collisions with them. In February, researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo, found that in crashes between small cars and large SUVs, the risk of death was 24 times greater in the car.
it seems that driving a SUV will make you no safer yet will make all other road users be at higher risk!selfish wankers!!!!!
[oops, there I was, trying to be polite]
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If I should ever choose to own and SUV, it is my call. I pay for it, I pay to run it, I determine how I wish to use it. If you want to tell me what I should drive, perhaps I should come around to your houses and tell you what to read, or what music to listen to, or what causes you can support. How successful would that be? In my experience, telling people what they should, or shouldn't do, drive, believe, or think just doesn't work.
Shuddup! Are you trying to put the ad agencies out of business? How would they survive without all those Govt sponsored campaigns to stop smoking, stop smoking in the car, stop the car at stop signs, eat more vegetables, push play, mind how you drink, don't drink and drive, don't speed, slip slop slap - but don't smack!
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You can move house using just a bicycle.
Pfft. You can move house using just the postal service. I was behind just such a person at the post office on Saturday. I wish I were making this up.
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A S,
Yes indeed, Samuel, any vehicle with a higher centre of gravity is more prone to rolling. This also applies to vans, various other people movers, trucks etc. Let's not forget that the basic laws of physics apply to other vehicle types too.
On the baggage thing, I suspect you'll find that they think equally unflattering things about people who sneer at the car they drive, or who tell them they are single handedly killing the planet etc... Telling people how they should act and think quite often has that effect.
Also, as someone pointed out earlier, american SUVs are quite often significantly different to the 4wds on NZ roads.
Actually, Nick, I do think less ad agencies trying to tell us how to suck eggs would be nice. I object to the assumption that I'm some mindless drone that has to be bombarded with redundant information so that I can function. Maybe its just me.... :-)
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A S: The problem with public knowledge is that people are being born every day while others die. So over 20 or 30 years, you and I may have heard a message a thousand times, but in that time a 1/4 or third of all people currently breathing at the start may have died and been replaced by others who know nothing. In 1996 most people understood MMP. Fifteen years later, the number who understoodit had fallen by roughly the number who would have turned 18 in the intervening years. Messages need to be repeated over and over and over just stand still.....never mind move forward.
Today, I think we are coming close to the limit of most people to absorb what they need to know in order tom ake wise choices. The cost of ignorance is growing all around us. Many people don't know enough and they don't know they don't know enough.
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Indeed.
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A S,
Steve, what I object to is getting patronised with the message 20 to 30 times a week. Short of catering for those with goldfish-like attention spans, I don't see that sort of frequency doing much except irritating the audience it is trying to reach, and putting large wads of dosh in the pockets of ad agencies and broadcasters.
Also, it really comes down to the individual to make wise choices, I get a bit uncomfortable with the idea of telling people how to think or what wise choices they should make. Anyway, this is all a bit off topic so I'll shut up on this and return you to the scheduled programming.
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Well having owned an SUV (and early Explorer, one of the ones with the exploding tires - bought for use in the desert) I think one big problem with SUV roll over is the suspension - in the US they in at least part exist to get around the federal car petrol economy targets (they are technically a truck) - they are sprung like a truck which means when you do that quick lane change/dodge to avoid someone you can get into an evil state where the suspension bounce from the first turn adds to that from the correction so that the unwary lose control - you can't be fast and nimble in these things
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Wonder what my car my car says about me?
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http://youtube.com/watch?v=NOr6EFoXZMk
Indeed.
**WOW!!**
That clip gave me an adrenalin rush. And not in a good way. I cannot believe Greenpeace actually made that clip and put it up for all to see. I will now have no hesitation in telling the next clip board holding donation seeking Greenpeace 'volunteer' to F@CK OFF!!.
If people want to shun the guy at work with an SUV then fine, but to spit in his coffee?? What next - why don't the lads give him a good thumping in the toilets, or maybe just smash his car up in the carpark? Because we're trying to save the planet people, it's an eco-war, the revolution is here and and it's time to start lining people up ...
Seriously, this whole SUV discussion has really been about something else. People have decided they know what's best and the rest of us better fall into line. If you drive an SUV you're a Rich Prick and you deserve what you get. That's why (as I explained in another thread I found myself in a road rage incident with an Angry Man. I pist him off because I was driving an Audi (not mine) and I tooted at him to choose a lane. The same as I do in my own Mitsubishi, but then I just get the finger.
What's next on the list? After we've stopped everyone driving SUV's maybe we can go after the people who live more than 10 miles from their work environment? Maybe we should ban all clothes made of unnatural fibres? Do women really need pantyhose? What purpose do they serve? If it's cold in winter stop shaving your legs ...
If my car (no, its not an SUV) has poor mileage (it doesn't) so what? Do you think a day will come when you can't fill your tank because I used up all the petrol? Oh, but that's not the issue - it's about Saving The Planet.
Here's a challenge: make a list of everything we can do to reduce carbon emissions. I'll sign off on it and the whole planet will follow your list. Then we'll be on our way to fixing the planet, right?
And then another Volcano will erupt and we'll still be fuct.
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What's next on the list?
Air travel. Seriously.
Seriously, this whole SUV discussion has really been about something else.
I suspect so.
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It's the "I want to be SAFE (and screw the consequences for you)" angle to the urban SUV that gets me
What's wrong with wanting to be safe Stephen? Or wanting our families to be safe?
And who do you know that has ever said "screw the consequences for you"? Outside of silly articles like the one linked to earlier, or anecdote? (If Julia Hartley Moore did then OK, I concede - I haven't read that yet.)
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What's wrong with wanting to be safe
Nothing at all - the objection is that SUVs make you safe in a way that endangers others unnecessarily. Endangers others, in the ways that others have already pointed out here: their larger size and greater mass makes collisions more deadly and they reduce others' visibility. Unnecessarily, in that there are safer cars than SUVs - I drive a 98 Volkswagen Passat, the model named the safest on NZ roads in a study last year some time. Safer than any model of SUV (and cheaper than most of them) and doesn't endanger my fellow motorists in the ways mentioned above.
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SHow me the stats! Maybe it's just my perception that every 2nd road death seems to have involved a car/truck collision.
I don't even need to link to stats I think for that Andrew. I think everyone knows that the prime causers of accidents on the road are alcohol and young drivers in cars.
There might be a perception problem around trucks/buses etc, but that's because when you get hit by a truck your car is going to end up a big mess. That doesn't mean they're more likely to be involved in accidents, or even that they cause them, just that it makes the news.
Those are actually heavy enough to have a maximum speed of 90km/h on the open road here. I wonder how many of the people who own them here are aware of this. I wonder how many of the cops know this and enforce it!
It's my understanding that 90km/hour arises from towing a trailer, and applies to my car when I tow as much as a truck with a trailer. Doesn't have anything to do with weight at all?
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There might be a perception problem around trucks/buses etc, but that's because when you get hit by a truck your car is going to end up a big mess. That doesn't mean they're more likely to be involved in accidents, or even that they cause them, just that it makes the news.
Doesn't this also apply to SUVs?
Nothing at all - the objection is that SUVs make you safe in a way that endangers others unnecessarily. Endangers others, in the ways that others have already pointed out here: their larger size and greater mass makes collisions more deadly and they reduce others' visibility.
Doesn't this also apply to trucks & buses?
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Tell you what - I drive a VW Touareg & an Audi A3 (not at the same time.)
Stop beating around the bush, call me a rich prick & I'm out of here for good.
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