Audrey, Cheesesteak, I think you both kind of hit the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned with regards to my opinion of SUV’s. Thank you. Now I can just rant. You all were reasonable, now I’m just gonna go off.
If you can be a responsible driver of an SUV, FINE! But if you’re going to talk on your fucking cellphone, cut in and out of traffic, tailgate, drive like you’re in a freaking sportscar, and basically act like an ignorant self absorbed fuckstick who owns the road because your bigger and badder, sitting up higher and “feel safer”, then get your ass out of your SUV, your head out of your ass, and start acting like there are other people on the road besides yourselves. Otherwise, there will continue to be threads like this, we will continue to hate people like this, and there ain’t a hella lot you can do to change our opinions. Until y’all quit acting like assholes. Buy your goddamned SUV - but start driving RESPONSIBLY. And did I mention get off that goddamned cellphone and quit fucking tailgating?
But hey - I could be wrong. For all I know everyone around the greater Woodfield area absolutely MUST have an SUV for legitimate uses like taking on the vast backroads and wilderness landscape of fucking Schaumburg. :rolleyes:
I suspect that you’re kinda fooling yourself here. As suggested by other posters, I suspect that most drivers tend to think that they are among the elite few who needn’t consider the possibility of single-vehicle crashes. It’s that darn Other Guy.
But anyway, you didn’t answer my question: If your wife’s safety is paramount, why not have her drive a Volvo?
No one has yet mentioned the role of the CAFE standards in killing off the full-sized station waggon, leaving people with families or other haulage needs little option other than the minivans or SUVs.
Full-sized station waggons were subject to the CAFE milage standards, and auto manufacturers dropped the product lines in order to meet fleet fuel consumption standards. Because SUVs are considered “light trucks” they do not fall under the fleet milage requirements, so this market segment expanded to meet the need.
A fine example of the law of unintended consequences. Of course, the CAFE standards could be modified to cover light trucks, but then where do the people who cannot use econoboxes go?
Nifty - so can I expect the check for my new Escalade within the next week? Not everyone has the ability to be picky when it comes to picking out a car - my friend is buying a small 4-door because it is what he can afford, but barely.
Your response reminds me of my last year in the dorms. The girls across the hall had very loud parties, with their door wide open, minors dancing with their bottles of crappy alcohol in the hallways. Their music was normally loud enough to cause vibration in my room, but when I asked them to keep it down, their response was inevitably: “No way! We can do what we want! If you had wanted to live in a library, you should have moved there!” <drunken laughter>
I have a ‘93 Pathfinder w/roof rack. Sometimes I don’t bother with the rack and stick long stuff inside. Open up the rear glass, 8 foot boards no problem. I have hauled 12’ pieces of siding inside (all the way from the dashboard, and leave it hang out a bit). I can schooch 4x8 sheets of plywood in it if I leave the tail gate up and angle the plywood. Once, I had 8 - 6"x6" x 8’ landscape timbers in it.
True, the Pathfinder isn’t all that big, but the ability to open the rear window OR hatch helps.
I have a ‘93 Pathfinder w/roof rack. Sometimes I don’t bother with the rack and stick long stuff inside. Open up the rear glass, 8 foot boards no problem. I have hauled 12’ pieces of siding inside (all the way from the dashboard, and leave it hang out a bit). I can schooch 4x8 sheets of plywood in it if I leave the tail gate up and angle the plywood. Once, I had 8 - 6"x6" x 8’ landscape timbers in it.
True, the Pathfinder isn’t all that big, but the ability to open the rear window OR hatch helps.
To trucks, still. But the manufs. would have to use a torquey V6 in SUVs like they do in minivans. There may be towing issues easily addressed with an increased gas guzzler tax.
It would be possible to bring up the mileage right now. But, SUV drivers want to be able to out accelerate the econoboxes, at least – so they stuff them with monster HP V8s. Still, the econoboxes with zing blow their doors off, barring a Cayenne, G45, or something with Lingenfelter in it.
SUV drivers are fighting a seriously losing battle with cars on the HP-to-weight ratio front. Just give up now. No, you cannot have a 500 HP V12 in every one of them to take your kid to school, while “cars” are subject to “laws.”
I drive a little car now, Cavalier, because it was a car I could afford to buy, but I would’ve preferred an SUV because I live at the tail end of a dirt road which I cannot get out of if there’s more than 6" snow on the ground, or if there’s been a hard rain.
I also despise parking-lot rudeness so much that I usually park at the end of the lot, where no one else parks, because when I would park closer to the store, my car would be inside the lines of one space, not encroaching on anyone, and I’d come out of the store to find that some fucktard soccer mom in a minivan (complete with car seat and soccer ball sticker on the back) had parked part way into my space, often on an angle, making it goddamn difficult to get into my car (I have a two door car. I need my entire parking space to be able to open the doors enough to get in and out of it.), leaving dings and dents in my doors, or giving me about an inch of clearance to actually back up and exit the space.
Around here it seems that the minivan drivers are the most inconsiderate fucknuggets (including my own father) while the SUV and light truck drivers are nowhere near the mark.
And people on cell phones in cars, trucks or SUVs should get the hell off of the road. Nearly being killed by one (rear ended while I was stopped and she was doing 65) once is quite fucking enough for me, thanks.
I live in an area where at least 75% of the vehicles are SUV’s and 4x4 trucks. By far the worse drivers are in the small cars. I think this mainly has to do with economy. Many peoples first cars tend to be small/used/cheap. Younger/inexperienced drivers often can’t afford anything else.
So, I would have to say that I wholeheatedly disagree.
Banning SUVs won’t work. What you obviously need is compulsory SUV ownership. Ban all other cars.
Think of it: no more lights shining in the back window of smaller cars. No more SUVs looking down on other drivers. Companies forced to widen and lengthen parking spaces. Traffic accidents will be much louder but less fatal. Everybody feeling that little bit safer and driving that little bit faster. Worried about pedestrian fatalities? Don’t be, they’ll all be in SUVs too. Paradise…
At least until people start driving monster trucks with six foot tyres.
Based on my experiences driving, SUVs are 1000% more likely to be involved in rear end collisions. That’s just crappy non-scientific analysis. But, mostly they don’t know how to stop or steer. Oh, and no matter what they know, their vehicle won’t do it for them at the speeds they are driving.
One traffic jam where two SUVs rear endied two cars, followed by two SUVs doing a spin / rollover aggressive driving dance just in front of us on 528, just to name two incidents, will get you wondering.
Well, I recently had the opportunity to go over to the dark side for a couple of weeks, parking my Subaru Impreza wagon in favor of a rental Ford Escape, supposedly a “small” SUV. Both are 4WD (although the Subaru’s system is intended mainly to enhance wet-road, rather than off-road, driving), and it was interesting to make a direct comparison.
General impression was vastly more interior room in the Ford; it had a quite solid feel without an excessively stiff ride and certainly handled acceptably for what seemed like a rather large and heavy vehicle. The brakes did not inspire confidence, however, and the Subie subjectively handles and corners far, far better. The Ford plowed horribly in fast corners, and I several times misunderestimated the handling and braking limits when first getting used to the larger vehicle.
In the end, I didn’t see any compelling reason to choose the the “larger” car over my own. Furthermore, upon returning, I looked up the specs on the Escape vs. my car, and found to my surprise that the Escape is only fractionally larger in length and width than the Impreza (although the Escape is at least a foot higher). Nevertheless the V6-equipped version I drove weighed 600 pounds more and got more than five fewer miles per gallon, both city and highway, than the Subie. There’s a slight gain in carrying capacity (69 vs. 62 cubic feet), hardly warranted IMO by the greater bulk, and that extra weight negates much of performance advantage of the Ford’s 201 HP mill vs. my car’s 142 ponies.
Hey, but if such numbers don’t concern you, go for the more wasteful vehicle; it’s no skin off my nose. I prefer to drive further for less money and enjoy it more, but to each his or her own.
I had never been run completely off the road, OFTEN, until SUVs came along. It used to be that if you were in the right lane minding your own business, and someone tried to swap paint with you, a horn meant “back in the left lane, yo.” Not. Any. More.
Pilot, once again, thanks for the self-centered, stereotypical, American attitude of “It’s a free country, I can do what I want and it’s up to you to deal with the consequences of my actions”. What do you say to the poor families bought a Corolla in '95, and can’t afford the ridiculous amounts of gas required for an SUV? Is it their fault for not having made the choice of buying a pickup, or a van? Some people simply can not afford the price of an SUV, and furthermore can not afford to maintain the amount of gas needed to drive an SUV, is that their fault? Don’t try to fault us under some false pretense that you’re crusading for freedom. Your so-called ‘freedom’ is endangering the lives of others.
Given a crash between an SUV and a passenger car, the passenger car will be much, much worse off than the SUV, and have a much higher chance of having fatalities. The SUV’s driver may fare a little better, but even then, does not have a significantly lower chance of avoiding injury.
While being higher up may be of advantage, I doubt it’s significant enough to make a difference. Your being higher up comes with significantly poorer handling, less maneuverability, and huge blind spots to your sides. You’re also more likely to overlook that one motorcycle or small sedan to your side when you take a cursory glance out your side mirror before deciding it’s clear.
The reason I wouldn’t take issue with my friend’s rx-7, or my other friend’s Skyline is that despite the miserable mileage those get, they hardly endanger my life if they are driven safely. Even if that woman in the SUV drives safely, they’re still preventing me from seeing what’s around them, I have to be on edge when driving near them because I’m not sure they can see me, and if they crash into me, I’m the one who’s going to suffer.
Sadly enough, I don’t think Taxman or Pilot actually give a damn whatsoever, and they both actually represent a fair percentage of the population in the US. And then with attitudes like that, people wonder why everyone hates us so much and why we have such a bad reputation.
Sorry I didn’t get back sooner, there’s this thing called “sleeping” that I like to do for 8 hours or so every day.
I wanna buy my wife an X5 or X3 (or maybe a Toe-reg or a Volvo SUV) as soon as we can afford one.
Also, on the debate re: SUVs aren’t safer because of the rollover risk, I’d really like to see the statistics on that. I’d bet that about 0% of the SUV rollover accidents involved little old ladies driving SUVs on the way to church and a substantially higher percentage involved teenagers who were less than sober and going way over the speed limit.
In other words, it’s too simplistic to say “SUVs aren’t safer because of the rollover risk,” and it’s not true that my opposition to that statement is because I think my wife is Maria Andretti or something.
