SUV’s – Yay or Nay

Remove all ads!

There is a lot of debate over the pro’s and con’s of Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV’s).

Those against them cite fuel economy, safety (rollover factor), and the general mis-guided impression of invulnerability that SUV drivers seem to have.

Those in favour of them cite improved visibility, carrying capability (passengers and cargo) and safety (traction).

So, what are your thoughts? Are you for or against them?

Edit: spelling

[ January 10, 2004, 16:25: Message edited by: Splunge ]

 

SUVs are good for only one thing I know: as an indicator of idiocy. If I know someone drives an SUV they are most likely mentally deficient, and I know not to associate with them. If they drive an SUV and have an American flag displayed somewhere on their automobile that view is further verified.

Approximately 95% of people who drive SUVs do not need one. I see no reason why a single yuppy commuting to his/her tech job requires an SUV.

SUV drivers are the worst drivers on the road. Period. In a perfect world a special license would be required for one of these abominations (actually in a perfect world SUVs simply wouldn't exist).

The carrying capacity increase over a normal car is negiligible. Infact, due to the way the seats are arranged it is often the case that there is LESS carrying capacity in an SUV.

They are incredibly annoying in parking lots as well. When parked next to an SUV, pulling out of a spot is incredibly difficult beacause one's entire view is obstruced.

I'll make one concession... An SUV is good for carrying around a lot of people. And by all means, if you're a parent in a Mormon family you should buy an SUV. But there is absolutely no excuse for seeing so many SUVs on the road in America. It's a testament to how wasteful and greedy this nation has become.

 

Well, when you get down to the ORIGINAL use for SUV's, then by all means, they rock. If one considers a Land Rover an SUV, you have to look at what it was originally made for, complete and utter offroading. When bought/rented from a certain African SUV learning center for Range Rover, they teach you how to use each and every feature the SUV offers. From tilt control (tire pressure and axel alignment) on steep sided turns, to driving in deep water (certain wheel capabilities) to powerful brakes that if pressed hard enough, will automatically reverse the vehicle. When people talk about SUV's on the road, they are bulky, expensive, and are only good for cargo space and carrying capacity. But when you find the 10% of all SUV owners who use their SUV's for offroad, they will have nought but praise for their automobile of choice. And from that 10%, only 5% of those use the SUV to its utmost competence.

But yes, when you go to the onroad capabilities of most SUV's (excluding Volvo XC90) they suck. I first started to practice driving in a 1992 Eddie Baurer (sp?) Ford Explorer... don't even think I don't know where I'm coming from. Yea, Splunge is right, you feel like a tank driving through the parking lot at Ingles, but when you get back on the road then go up and down a dirt road and back on a paved road, turning sucks, brakes usually suck, i felt like i was about to hit the pavement almost everytime. But that may just be that Explorer...

 

Inquisitor -- Who the hell do you think you are?. I take direct offense at that remark....and am SICK AND TIRED of hearing crap about the American flag.

I drive an SUV for the reasons of visibility and safety and luxury.....and I'm an excellent driver -- never having an accident in many years of driving. Idiocy? Mentally deficient?? Funny....I was thinking that YOU epitomized that definition by your post -- or better yet --"moron".

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa... I won't name names but someone here needs to develop a sense of humor. Besides, I said SUV drivers are "most likely" mentally deficient, not always!

Personally, I fail to see why anyone would drive an SUV for the purpose of "luxury". But you can rationalize it anyway you want - whatever helps you sleep at night. And I fail to see how SUVs are "safe" either. Personally, I find that pumping copious amounts of money via gasoline sales into terrorist sponsoring countries is not safe. But that's just me.

And that goes back to the whole "American flag" comment. An American flag on an SUV is a paradox. A flag indicates an attempt to support your country, yet at the same time you show you are unwilling to make even the smallest sacrifice for that country by driving around an accident-causing, terrorist-funding monstrosity.

[ January 10, 2004, 07:54: Message edited by: InquisitorX ]

 

All cars are bad.

Why?

Horrible nasty ugly noisy smelly things. Drive too fast and try to hit me. Makes people think it's ok to work a hundred million miles away, and drive back and forth. Makes people think that if you can't get there in 20 minutes it's not worth it. Makes people think it's good to beep at people and shout and that having a fancy hunk of scrap metal makes you a beter person, or somehow more advanced in life. Makes people forget they have feet for a reason. Makes people forget that they'd get better returns for their work and effort if they just buried their money in the backyard and used it for compost. Makes people think that the mining industry and that the oil industry, is somehow a good thing. Encourages sloth, wrath, envy, pride, greed, gluttony, lust too. Too lazy to walk, too lazy to bother, angry at others, road rage, always impatient, want a better car, have to beat everyone else, pride speaks for itself, self-indulgence, obsessed with comfort, want more -always the next car, or one for themselves, value it too much, think it's ok to use one and forget the costs to make it, let alone run it, need a car to pick-up, think they should be picking up.

I don't like cars. If these Sports Utility Vehicles are only driven for the same reasons that people drive other cars they would be bad enough, it's often used as some sort of fashionable thing, even worse. Feel superior, drive like madmen, like truck-drivers. Truck-drivers are madmen. Had to be said. Doesn't make you a bad person. Just insane. Bad for your health. Bad for mine.

I'll tell you this. It'd be more visible, and a lot safer for everyone, if people didn't use cars in the first place. Plus then we wouldn't need those great big asphalt roads. Another wasted reason for mining, another blight upon the landscape. Another unnecessary venture.

I don't like cars. People like them too much.

 

How does driving an SUV promote terrorism? Most of the countries that we buy oil from are a little more peaceful. Why does everyone assume that every middle-eastern county is a cesspool of terrorism?

Okay, back on topic. SUV's are not worse than any other car, with the exception of the Hummer. It is all a matter of personal preferance though, so oh well.

*edit* 3:50 am and not sure what I am really talking about, so sorry if I don't make any sense.

 

I am not very fond of SUV's but the reasons stated here I could probably live with, for me it is safety which makes me dislike them. Not the safety for the one driving the SUV but the safety for everyone else. Anything less than a tank or another SUV which gets into an accident with a SUV is going to be demolished and the bumper of the SUV is nice and squishy head height for the person in the other car.
I have been driving smaller cars in places with plenty of SUV's and I can tell you, you dont feel safe, the slightest bump from one of those monsters and you are toast.

 

I'll tell ya', right now, that improved visibility is no joke and it stops pile-ups from occuring.

The reason is that my state has a really strict law on window tint. I mean, you can have nothing, or you can have 5%. And you totally get your hole reamed if the cop beams you at 10%. It's a huge hassle, and you actually have to show up and have your windows completely scraped, before you go and get them tinted at the acceptable level. Next door neighbor got a friendly call from the sheriff not a few months back.

Anyways, most SUVs have really massive windows. That you can see right through. All the way up to that jackknifed trailer. Or side rail collision. At the very least, you can see break lights.

There are down sides to it. But I'm the kind of guy that's more worried about yanking and banking, before I worry about the horn. Get safe, then gesture. You can cuss while you're getting safe, though.

One day we'll get cars networked together, and they'll report stuff down the line to each other. But right now, it's all about anticipation. And those massive windows help save more lives than you realize or categorize.

 

I agree with some of what Inquisitor said. I think the point he was trying to get across (less then eloquent, as it was) was that SUV drivers don't think about the implications of the car they drive, and are generally the type of people who don't care about the overall impact of their actions. They tend to drive them not for practicality, or at least perceived practicality, but for the "status." They talk themselves into the virtue of the SUV simply because they think they're cooler.

Many people have subscribed to the myth put out by the auto industry that SUV's are this infallible bubble of automotive safety. Like you're driving a tank or something. That's just not true. SUV's are some of the least safe vehicles on the road. They look tought, but they're getting built cheaper and cheaper these days, which means less safe. Also, it doesn't take a physics degree to realize that top-heavy objects moving at high speeds are exponentially more likely to tip over. Unlike Weebles, they wobble AND they do fall down.

It's very annoying when single car drivers insist on driving SUV's. I can understand if you have a family or carry a lot of cargo on a regular basis. But otherwise they just do it for the image. That call it "sport utility," yet they are used for neither sports or utilities. Annoying.

I always find the "power" arguement highly amusing. And by power I mean the feeling of empowerment SUV's apparantly give off. People say "when you're up that high and so big, nobody on the road messes with you." This is amusing because about 90% of the time the A$$holes who push everybody around on the road the most are the SUV drivers. The words "small" and "penis" come to mind.

SUV's also have some of the worst gas mileage on the road. Another myth put out by the auto industry - be prepared, this will make you laugh - is that "purchasing newer SUV's is good for the environment, because emission standards are better on newer cars, hence the fleet of more polluting cars are removed from the road."



Do they think we're all idiots? THey must. When someone buys a new car, do they throw their old car away? Or just put it out to pasture? No, they sell the car to someone less affluent, who then sells it and it's driven and so on until it falls apart. They try to get the prospective buyer to feel all warm and fuzzy about buying a gas guzzling, insurance hiking, foreign-oil-dependence-increasing monster.

The Hummer is probably the worst violater of this. I hate the Hummer and all who want one. I heard that when you buy a Hummer, you get a free T-shirt that says "F*CK THE ENVIRONMENT!" Why anyone would need such a road hogging, polluting vehicle is beyond me.

I think SUV's are bad news, and I admit I think less of people who drive them who obviously don't need to. But I have this view because of obvious truths and personal experience, not unprovable silliness like "buying an SUV supports terrorists."

edit: It probably should be noted that my views probably skew this way because I live in Texas, home of all things unnecessarily large. But I don't think I'm too far off the mark for everywhere else. Sadly.

[ January 10, 2004, 19:02: Message edited by: Death Rabbit ]

 

I love the visibility arguement. I live in a decent sized city (about 250,000) with pretty bad traffic problems and me and my little toyota coralla have never once had visibilty problems. If you can't see beyond the car in front of you, guess what, its because you're not paying attention. Funny in a bad way, I almost got killed by the ultimate stereotype. A blonde woman talking on a cell phone driving an SUV. Wonderful combination.

 

Death Rabbit -- Oh really?? It absolutely floors me that you feel you can make judgements like this -- they "are generally the type of people who don't care about the overall impact of their actions". First of all, if you really believe this, I feel very, very sad for you -- it's quite pathetic. Secondly, for myself and people that I know that drive them, safety is THE reason they do. Do you know what "safety" means? -- it means that we feel less of an accident risk...that we DON'T want to get into accidents....that we value life - our own and those of others on the road. Before you spout off generalistic myopic comments like the above, you might want to use your brain a little and really think about what you're saying.

 

Well everyone has the right to drive what they want (well as long as it's legal anyhow) but I personally don't like SUV's and think that they cause more harm than good, of course they give some form of security but then again if you crash with someone who doesn't have a SUV the damage will be worse for him.

 

Morgoth -- very true. If I should ever get in an accident with a vehicle much smaller than mine (and most are since I drive an Expedition), chances are that person will come out the worse. However, the point is to AVOID the accident to begin with, and while all accidents can't be prevented from better visibility, many can. I sit so high up that I can see above the roofs of cars in front of me and can react much faster to problem situations. (I used to drive a Mustang where you're sitting right on the road -- the lowest riding car I've ever been in -- and you can't even see around the car in front of you.) The downside of driving an Expedition though is that if you DON'T get out of the way fast enough, you're a bigger target to hit. :/

 

This and the insane amount of gas these things need. It is almost bankrotting for 'normal' people to drive a car like this here in Europe. But I know, in the U.S. the gas is a lot less expensive than here.
But think about running out of oil in the near future...since out economies depend on oil would it not be smart to stretch the resources which are left?

About the visibility: There are other cars where you sit high enough that need less gas than these tanks. The Mercedes A-Class for example.

 

Actually the new SUV's gas mileage is really not that bad. My parents 98 4 runner gets the same gas mileage as my 91 mazada protege. But who would complain about the gas mileage of a 91 mazada protege? Gas Mileage IMHO is really not a valid arguement unless you compare the same year. A lot of the new SUVs get just as good gas mileage as the older cars that a lot of people drive. And if people want to guzzle a lot of gas, more power to them. All they are doing is wasting their own money, and maybe once we all run out we will switch to something else.

SUVs also have their uses, for example, towing. My family has a boat that we will use in the summer, and there is no way that we will be able to tow it using a compact car, period. I actually see that a fair number of SUV owners also own something that they need to tow, they just don't tow it whenever they drive.

If I think of anything else I'll add it, lol.

 

BTA - I have an Eclipse also, and really dislike it when a big SUV changes lanes in front of me, because I can't see a damn thing. Also, it is impossible to backout of a parking space if one or two of them are next to me. But IMO there is nothing like driving just a few inches off the ground, rather than a couple of feet. It makes me laugh to see the short lumpy soccer moms here in suburbia struggling to climb into them at the grocery store. Maybe they should get small ladders.

Ostentatious is the word that comes to mind when I think of SUVs. But people should certainly be able to own them if that's what they want.

Edit: Is it true that they all come with Bush/Cheney stickers as standard equipment?

[ January 11, 2004, 21:10: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]