What’s evil is what my coworker has - two people, with a teenage kid and one large dog, and they own a fucking Escalade. Doesn’t that get like, 12 miles to the gallon, or something? She drives it alone to work - about 30 miles each way.
This.
Just to go for a short trip down the slippery slope, there are “those who know what is best for you” (also called the PC police?) that would control or “guilt” every part of your life - even though it’s none of their business.
You owe no apologies or explanations to anyone.
But then, he will turn into The Joker, and be even MORE evil!
Nooooooooooooo! 
Actually, society can decide that a particular consumer product is so harmful to the public that it should be banned. Where does the “it’s a free country” reasoning fit in then?
The “fit” there is, that you are endangering people, and the “common welfare” or the “common good” takes over. It’s like the expression “my freedom to extend my arm stops at your nose” or something like that. However, the reason should be valid, and have more meat to it than some vague “I just don’t like it”.
As long as you sacrifice a virgin every fall equinox, God will forgive your sinful automobile choice.
That, or running twice around the block naked. Your choice.
Yes, but as I understand it a lot of roll-overs can be prevented by not taking turns too fast. Whereas there’s only so much you can do to avoid a car-vs-car accident, since it’s dependent on the other driver. (For what it’s worth, I also made sure to get a model that rated well in roll-over tests compared to other cars of its size.)
Regarding accident avoidance, I’m not convinced being a little more likely to get hit does enough to cancel out the benefit of having a heavier vehicle. Consider this thought experiment:
Imagine my vehicle were twice the size of a normal car in every dimension. (In reality, it’s not.) This would double the width of the cross section seen by any incoming vehicle, making it twice as likely to get hit. (The height of the cross-section is basically irrelevant, unless we’re dealing with flying cars.) But the volume of the car, and thus its mass, would be increased by a factor of 8, meaning any force exerted on the vehicle only produces 1/8th the effect. Of course, if every collision where 8 times more powerful than needed to kill you, this would be a meaningless gain. But given that there are large numbers of both fatal and non-fatal accidents, I think it’s reasonable to think that there are quite a few where the mass of your vehicle really is likely to make the difference between life and death. And it’s also worth considering that the additional collisions experienced by the SUV (i.e., those that were near-misses for the small car) are mostly the more glancing collisions.
Of course that’s quite a simplified take on things, and I could be convinced otherwise by detailed accident statistics, showing, say that there are more fatal collisions per vehicle for SUV’s than for small cars. But I haven’t seen any specific statistics cited so far in this thread (unless I just missed them).
Hell, no. That depletes all the octane.
For what it’s worth, I always wear my seatbelt and insist that my passengers do the same, which as Magiver mentions reduces the risk of ejection during a rollover.
In response to the several comments of the form: “What do you care what people think?” I should point out that if I really cared I would have asked before purchasing the vehicle. I care only at the level of “This may make for an interesting message board discussion”, not at the “I’m going to make major changes in my lifestyle” level.
This is an interesting point. From a strictly utilitarian point of view, I think it could be considered immoral, but then again, so could the fact that I’m spending money on cable TV instead of donating that money to feed starving orphans. I guess I’m saying I’m skeptical of moral systems that don’t treat any degree of selfishness as morally acceptable.
More specifically, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe I have a higher moral obligation to look out for my daughter’s safety than to look out for someone else’s. That’s not to say I can run over someone else’s kid if it means getting my daughter’s tummy ache treated five seconds sooner – but I don’t think I have to treat everyone exactly the same either. E.g., I bought my daughter a car seat that was brand new and considered quite safe. Would the moral thing to do have been to buy her a lower quality, used car seat for half the price and spend the other half buying someone else’s kid an equally cheap car seat?
Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that I consider myself a fairly safe driver (doesn’t everyone?), so I’m more worried about collisions that are the other driver’s fault. Do I have as high a moral obligation to protect someone else from their mistakes and recklessness as I do to protect myself and my family? I’m not sure I do. E.g., if someone is speeding along in their little sports car at 100 mph and looses control and swerves into me, and they end up dying, I’d certainly feel bad about it (even though I’d consider it their fault). But not as bad as I’d feel if they killed my wife or child.
I think this is a perfectly valid moral argument in theory. In practice, I guess the questions you’d have to answer (and personally, I don’t know the answers to them, if they exist) are:
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Is this vehicle built so that it unnecessarily increases the risks to other cars (the “higher bumper” issue and so forth)?
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Is your reasoning encouraging a sort of vehicular “arms race” where lots of people get bigger and heavier vehicles for the presumed safety advantage and so the advantage to you is reduced, because so many of the vehicles on the road are now big and heavy?
What sort of resources is God planning on providing and how? Does that include cleaning up pollution for us and removing CO2 from the atmosphere?
And what are we doing to prevent God from providing resources? I blame the gays.
It sounds like you need a priest more than a message board.
I don’t have a cite for this, but my guess is a far larger amount of rollovers happen when trying to avoid an accident in the first place, or after already having hit/clipped another car, snowbank, etc. So “not taking turns too fast” isn’t going to help you much there.
Yes
Yes, we are not trusting God, so He lets us do it.
Common tactic, but it doesn’t work.
You’re going to have to do better than that, Kanicbird. When I ask what resources God is going to provide, “all of them” is something Homer Simpson would say. And you didn’t answer the “how” question, each resource requiring a separate answer.
If you’re claiming that God is going to supply us with additional petroleum, you have to give us some indication as to the manner. Is He going to refill storage tanks or put it underground? If the latter, how will we know it’s there? Will the whole process be a spectacular miracle that everyone witnesses, or will new reserves show up seemingly as a new discovery in order to preserve the mystery. (Bonus question: Where does petroleum come from?)
Are you prepared to argue that there are cases where God has already resupplied certain societies with resources? Outside of Bible stories, I mean. If you’re going to convince people that an reliable yet untapped source of resources is available, you’re going to have to provide more than a Bible passage about how God will provide.
Saying “Trust in God” is way too vague if you’re recommending a change in religious policy. And what do you mean by “we”? A majority? Or absolutely everyone? The whole world or just the US?
this thread reminds me of an incident that happened to a friend of mine. He was approached by a kid who got out of a 6 cylinder TRUCK and berated him for driving an SUV. He pointed to the Hybrid insignia on his Ford Escape and asked the kid if his truck got 35 mpg around town. Personally, I would have run him over and claimed him as a dependent but that’s just me.
About 6 years ago, I pulled out a car that had absolutlutly NO business being up here in the snow. (I’ve pulled out 4 cars and trucks this year. It’s just something you have to do)
Well it wasn’t on the road It was off the road. I pulled them out and escorted them back to the highway.
The driver then proceeded to try to dress me down because I was driving an SUV, and SUV’s are bad. This SUV had just saved their butt but that was not important, since SUV’s are bad.
I was gob smacked. I was very tempted to just drag them back to where I found them.
:: checks tim with portable Evil-o-Meter ::
Yes, but not for the SUV. But you are not only totally depraved and irredeemable, but you are, in fact, NOT one of the elect predestined for salvation. So if you were thinking about going on a murdering spree, knock yourself out.
Seriously, why are you bothering?
Kanicbird’s god is pure, unblinking evil–sadistic, petty, vile, manipulative, and quite possibly schizophrenic. Thank Hera he isn’t real.
It works for me