I'm bad. I did a bad thing. Go ahead and yell at me.

In My Humble Opinion
41

I don’t like SUV’s. I don’t like pick up trucks. I don’t like big cars (example would be a Crown Victoria). The things are a waste of space if you ask me. My fiance has an SUV and I hate it. I’ve got a Motorbike and am thinking about buying the new Civic SIR. Heck, my parents even bought a new civic hybrid (there other vehicles are all new- and small- because newer vehicles get better gas milage…in general anyhow)

I’m not gonna call anyone a bad person over something as silly as what car they drive, just don’t complain about the gas prices or I’ll get pretty angry.

42

Welcome, d_redguy . Lost your cherry in an SUV (thread) started by SexyWriter Huh? Great things are bound to be in store for you…

Now: “I’ve got a shotgun and a rifle and a four wheel drive” (pickup)
And an SUV and big dogs and pistols and all other sorts of country stuff 'cause I live in the country. I’d have the same stuff if I lived in town, though.

SexyWriter : Congratualtions on your choice of a vehicle! (That being the one YOU chose, rather than what someone else would have you choose.)

43

The way this thread is going, I can see it headed towards either In My Humble Opinion or The BBQ Pit. If there’s another post debating the apppropriateness of SUVs it will be moved to one of those fora.

Yes, that’s right, I said fora, not forums! If you want to call me on it take it to the Pit, if you dare.

44

I thought we beat this whole anti suv thing to death in the great FatherJohn wars…

45

To all the SUV haters : an honest question

What are the bad/incorrect reasons for owning an SUV ?

What are the acceptable reasons for owning an SUV ?

I’m not trying to attack you guys, I’m just interested in your opinions.

46

sorry, arnold, I didn’t see your post… Ignore my question, I’ll start another thread one day

Sorry

47

Erm, no, not really. At least, that wasn’t my intention - I was concentrating on the inattentive assholes with SUVs who don’t really realize the size of their vehicles and drive like crap. (Yes, people in regular cars do that too. When you do that with a larger vehicle it only compounds the problems for drivers around you. I covered this in my first post.)

As to the lack of 4x4 capability, more’s the pity; most people I know with SUVs do have that.

48

Whoops, Arnold posted between the time I hit reply and when I hit submit. I hope that wasn’t considered enough to move the thread, I was just reiterating that I wasn’t saying all/most/whatever SUV drivers are bad.

49

I don’t really like SUVs either. Some of them are ok looking (although I would NEVER have gone with a Ford :)), and I can see how they can be very useful, but they are just too damn big nowadays! I remember a fre years ago when they were still pretty small - it wasn’t a problem then. But I drive a Tercel (I can’t afford anything else). It’s a small car. It could fit inside many SUVs with room to spare. Now that means that those are BIG, at least as far as I’m concerned. And I commute from Hamilton to Mississauga during the summer, and Hamilton-Guelph during the school year. I actually DO pay more attention to SUVs on the road than I do to other cars, because I know that due to their size, they have limited visibility (larger blind spots) and a lot of drivers have trouble knowing the size of their cars. The thing about pothole swerving isn’t just because they’re SUVs - it’s because the manoever requires that SUV to leave its lane half the time, because it fills 99% of it to begin with! An Accord, or Camry or whathaveyou is somewhat less likey to end up halfway into another lane (not that it doesn’t happen - I was almost sideswiped by a Neon today).

It’s just to say that they are more worrisome for me, as a driver, and obviously other people feel the same. I see people driving these things everyday, and (at least in the area of Mississauga that I drive in) a lot of them add in the extra sin of chatting on their cellphones while driving. I don’t know - I just notice it more in SUVs than in smaller cars, though it likey happens with equal frequency. So, basically, as I said, its just more worrisome.

HOWEVER - if you like your car, thats great. If it suits your wants and needs, thats great too. Just make a few efforts (this is not aimed at anyone in this thread - its just a general statement) to recognize that just because you’re in a big. powerful car, doesn’t mean the rest of us are, and we all want to get to where we’re going as safely as possible. Give us a little more room, take the extra second to doublecheck your blindspots, and LEARN THE VEHICLE’S DIMENSIONS and we’ll all get along fine :smiley:

50

Sexy,
Enjoy. Did you get the regular 4 door Exp or the 2 door Sport? They’ve gotten bigger recently, have thought about the Sport myself. Can I rationalize it because my 130 lb Shep. cannot sit upright in my 87 Nissan because she’s too tall? They tell me I’m a big guy with a big dog, I should get a big truck. I’ve been responsible with my 4-banger for 15 years.

Oh, and you’re bad.

[sub] come over here and let me spank you [/sub]:eek:

51

Brava! You read my mind. Any vehicle that impedes my ability to drive well and protect myself warrants my immediate disdain and scorn, and the driver should expect that I am going to do whatever I must not to be near it. I am going to want to be in front of any SUV, 18-wheeler, or otherwise oversized vehicle. I need to see the road; call me crazy, but it makes me a better driver. I drive an all-wheel drive sedan, but I allow that others have different needs and wants out of vehicles than I do, but I am personally affected by people who risk my life just so they can tote a dog. Tote your dog; just be prepared for me to give you dirty looks when you impair my vision.

That said, sexywriter, you’re not a bad person. You made a choice, and it’s your right. Enjoy your vehicle, but don’t be surprised when I pass you just to be in front of you.

52

I have a minivan and I hate it, you might as well just write mom-obile right across the back. That being said I was told by my husband that I have a choice for my next car between another minivan or a SUV. I really, really want a cute little sports car, but with 3 huge kids and a huge dog I can’t have one. Plus if the kids come with me when I grocery shop, there ain’t no way the groceries and the kids can fit in a standard car. I could buy my sportscar, and buy the husband a SUV, but then I’d be stuck driving his SUV most of the time while he got the dream car. So I don’t care if you like SUV’s or not. They are better than my minivan and I’m gonna buy one.

53

Well, at least it’s not an Excursion. Tell you what, you do me a personal favor and learn how to park that sucker, and I’ll forgive you (personally) for buying it. Please tell me, though, that it doesn’t have the special Assault Grille[sup]tm[/sup] that seems to be standard equipment on so many giant SUVs and trucks nowadays.

And I’d just like to state for the record that I love Arnold for using the word “fora.”

54

SexyWriter, GOOD FOR YOU!!! To hell with all the arguments posted by the militant environmentalists, the envious and those who cannot drive well enough to deal with other vehicles on the road.

The main arguments against SUVs that I’ve seen, and seen varied here, are:

  1. They pollute everything. Well, every state that I’m familiar with has pretty strident emissions requirements. You’re not polluting any more than anyone else, and in the modern age motorized transportation is pretty much a necessity.

  2. They use too much gas. If you can afford to keep the tanks filled, whose business is it but yours how much gas you buy?

  3. They’re hard to see around. I agree with this argument about SUVs and pick-ups, but it’s one of the hazards of driving, and people who are aware of their surroundings should be able to handle the couple extra degrees of occulting you may cause.

I’m SO sick of the politics of envy rattling around every time someone indulges themselves in something they want and can make personal use of I could scream. Oh wait, I just did.

55

Arnold, I think the ‘debating the SUV’ bit isn’t dying out. Sorry about that. But since the battle’s been rejoined, maybe IMHO’s the place for this, among the various fora. :slight_smile:

::tips hat both to Arnold and InternetLegend::

It’s “one of the hazards of driving” that has increased by some incredible multiple in just the past decade. This is like saying that because one can deal with the occasional pothole, it’s OK if they never patch the streets.

‘Couple extra degrees’?! Behind a standard passenger car, from subcompact to Cadillac, I lose zero degrees of visibility: I can see both around and through it. (Hell, if there’s a line of them in front of me on a straight highway in rush hour, I can see through several of them in a row. But it’s rare that I get that opportunity these days - too many SUVs. :rolleyes:)

But if I’m following an SUV, I can’t see through it. And it’s bigger and wider, so it’s harder to see around it as well. So if it takes up 10° of my field of vision, and a regular passenger car takes up 8°, the SUV is blocking 10° more of my field of vision than the passenger car, not 2° more. And most important, it’s the 10° right in front of me.

WTF?!

Look, if this was about envy, I’d be ranting against Jaguars, which are increasingly common locally. But I’m fine with Jaguars - if people want to have them, it’s fine with me. That people here periodically rant about view-blocking vehicles but not about Jaguars or Porsches or what have you, should demonstrate adequately that this is not about envy.

You make a transparent SUV or minivan, and you can fill the roads with 'em, as far as I care. Lower the seats, lower the windows and make 'em bigger, especially in back (and don’t tint them, fercryinoutloud - why does it seem that tinted back windows are much more common in SUVs and minivans than in normal cars?) so I can see through, the way I can with any other car, and my hat will be off to you.

For me, this is about visibility. And that’s all it’s about. It seems that’s the case for several other posters in this thread. And all the red herrings in the world won’t change that.

56

Since I don’t think this is worthy of Great Debates (too… mundane, I suppose :)), and since I just know you kids will behave, this one is off to IMHO.

And for SexyWriter: you had a Jag, and you replace it with an SUV? Veeeeery bad.

57

I admit that lack of sleep is fuddling my brain severely right now, but wasn’t this originally in MPSIMS? I’m having trouble focusing on the computer at the moment, so I’m only wondering this because I think my brain is all mixed up.

58

It was, but see Coldfire’s post, and Arnold’s that preceded it. Once the debate wouldn’t go away, it stopped being MPSIMS-appropriate; Coldfire explained why here rather than elsewhere.

59

I see the SUV thing sort of like smoking. For those of us in regular type cars (non-smokers), having an SUV (smoker) around poses a danger to us, in reduced visibility and increased accident lethality (second hand smoke). Increase the number of SUVs in any given area, and the danger increased. Unlike smoking, one does not have the ability to go to a non-SUV zone of your favorite highway.

Couple that with the impression that many SUV owners only buy the things because they are “cool”, and you can get a serious level of irritation. Note that just about every “anti-SUV” person here is willing to give someone a free pass if they have a need, which I think is fair.

60

No, I’m saying that being in an SUV in a crash makes the SUV driver safer. I’m also saying that, no matter what hits you at highway speed, you’re gonna get messed up, so some people prefer to put as much steel around themselves as possible - just in case. I’m also suggesting that other car types could be made more survivable, and maybe this is a more productive direction for all this energy to go instead of insisting that SUV drivers should have the same risks as everyone else.

As far as minivans and station wagons, minivans aren’t as crash-resistand (they tend to crumple like aluminum cans) and they’re often under-powered. Minivans also block just as much (if not more) visibility for other vehicles as SUV’s - they’re just as tall, they are just as long and almost as wide, and they’re lower to the ground so you can’t even see under them. Station wagons…y’know, it’s been years since I’ve seen a brand-spanking new station wagon on a car lot. Do they even still make them? Besides, some people just prefer to drive trucks.

It really does depend entirely on personal choice, but so many people have been insisting that nobody needs one and they’re just plain evil, I decided to give some reasons that some people may have for buying them. These posts are not intended to be the only reasons that every SUV owner buys their vehicle, but they do factor into many drivers’ decisions to buy the vehicle they buy.

Now, I’m not telling you that you should buy a huge car and that driving a compact car makes you a bad person. You, however, seem to be of the opinion that nobody should buy a big car and that driving one makes them a bad person. Do you see the double standard here? I never said that compact cars were “obsolete” or that everyone should drive SUVs - I don’t drive an SUV and don’t plan to. I’ve been saying all along that this is a matter of choice, and that everyone is entitled to their opinion (even an SUV owner) and that people should just drive what they want and let consumer choice drive the auto market.

Folks, do you understand why the really huge gas-guzzling SUV’s like Excursions are popular right now? Among other reasons (including personal-freaking-preference), it’s because some people are buying them to thumb their noses at the anti-SUV lobby.

Now, please, everyone calm down or I’m gonna go trade my mid-size Pontiac in on a Ford Excursion, and drive through your town yakking on my cellphone and blasting bagpipe music from the stereo while swerving into your lane to avoid potholes.