Personally, I find them irritating. No big deal since I find other things irritating. However, there are some advantages to having them around.
Going by personal experience, car prices in the past seemed to be getting higher and higher and higher, seeming to get out of reach. This seemed to reverse a few years ago and now, you can get a decent car for $14,000 or so, which if compared price wise to 15 or so years ago is favorable (inflation). I don’t know if this is ‘real’ or not but is my take.
Why? SUV’s! SUV’s started to get popular right before the price for a decent low-end used car dropped. If you look at car commercials, what % are for SUV’s? It seems like 3 out of 4 or even more. I have heard stats which said that the markup (profit) on SUV’s are very high. It appears that the car industry is making big bucks on SUV’s and then trying to go after the little guy with a better selection of cheaper cars. If they didn’t have SUV’s then they would try to make up this profit with the smaller cars much like in the past. In essense, the SUV driver is paying for part of my car!
Another thing. Some people make more than me. This irritates me. SUV’s help correct this imbalance since they are blowing large amounts of their money on a hugely depreciating assets while I quietly collect my money to spend on assets that will bring me in more money and so on. This helps keeps people that unfairly make more than me below me on social status! SUV drivers that make less than me? BUAHAHAHAHA. Lick my boots peasant! Pay me my rent! Sheesh, if they didn’t spend all that money on SUV’s and could get their own house, who would pay me rent?
How about mechanics? They see an SUV and feel they can charge them more and may be more likely to cut me a break.
People looking to cause accidents for insurance scams…SUV or me? They’ll take the SUV I’m sure.
Cops pulling me over for speeding irritate me. Cops don’t get paid as much as they should. Ticket the guy in the little car or the big honking SUV? It could be my imagination but I do think SUV’s I see pulled over by cops are overweighted toward SUV’s. Keeps them off my butt! I imagine sport cars have more of a problem also.
So people, thank the SUV’s!