Bryan Appleyard has a terrific piece in defence of 4×4 vehicles, often dubbed as “Chelsea Tractors” on account of their often being driven by well-heeled west Londoners in the narrow streets of said neighbourhood rather than being driven in muddy village lanes. He says what I suspect has been the obvious point, which is that class hatred and the current puritanical culture explains what fires the dislike of these vehicles. The amount of petrol consumed per mile has, I expect, not got a lot to do with it.
These cars have become emblems of all our environmental crimes. They represent 7.5% of the UK car market and 100% of British car loathing. The very idea that in town, or even in the country, anybody should use a car in which all four wheels are driven is regarded as a crime comparable to logging the rainforests or clubbing seals. Across Europe, owners of 4x4s
(or, as they are also called, Sports Utility Vehicles, or SUVs) have become eco-pariahs, malevolent planet-warmers. If you happen to be sitting in a Range Rover Sport, a BMW X5 or, worst of all, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo S in London, it is best not to catch the eyes of any pedestrian.
I can sympathise, however, with some, not all, of the annoyance that these vehicles provoke. Their drivers are often terrible, imagining that their being surrounded by massive lumps of metal means they are somehow absolved from the rules of the road. They gobble up a lot of parking space, which is at a premium in highly-taxed London. They have a higher centre of gravity than most cars and yet some drivers do not adjust their driving to take account of this. And I occasionally do wonder quite why a person needs such a large vehicle to take little Johnny to school or do the shopping.
But whether I think people should or should not “need” to have such a vehicle is beside the point. I have an opinion, but the Greenies want to use the coercive power of the state to limit our motoriing ambitions, and I very much doubt that concern for the welfare of the planet has much to do with it.
Talking of politics of envy and massive City salaries, this article is worth a look.
We have the same class envy here in the States directed towards “McMansions.”
The second is the “dust-to-dust” cost argument, the true environmental cost of a vehicle from build to scrap. Large amounts of carbon are emitted when a car is built, so, with over 70% of all Land Rovers still on the road, the company can claim its green credentials are much better than emission figures suggest. The credibility of the Prius has been eroded by figures showing its dust-to-dust may be damagingly high.
Somehow no one ever mentions this.
I agree Johnathan. It’s not the vehicles themselves that annoy me, but I know when I see the Cadillac or Lincoln symbol on the back of an SUV in a parking lot, that I can expect it to back out without looking. And when I see the driver, he/she will be talking on a cell phone, staring blankly forward while driving and, as likely as not, be attempting to light a cigarette.
I think the resentment against the really big money makers is from the idea that they make their wealth from arbitrage of regulatory environments which are beyond the control of the people who’s jobs are regulated out of existence.
That’s a strange old post there. You seem to support Appleyard, yet then wade in with exactly the kind of patronising bigotry he’s mocking.
I’m not convinced that 4×4 drivers “are often terrible”, at least not more than any other drivers; you just notice them more. Most of them have a similar wheel base to any other cars so don’t really “gobble up” any more parking space than anyone else, other than vertically, which isn’t really an issue. Estate cars take up a lot more. And what exactly do you mean by drivers not adjusting their driving to the higher centre of gravity? Do you see a lot of them tipping over?
And finally you get to the real point, which is mocking the use of them for taking children to school and shopping (rather than, I assume, rushing your prize ewe over the moors to the vet’nary). In other words, they’re used by suburban women who should know their place and use something smaller. Er, right, thanks.
I like my 4WD car. I like that I can throw lots of stuff in the back — or sleep there comfortably if I have to. I like that I can tow huge things out of farm paddocks without getting stuck. I like that it has climate controlled air conditioning. I like that it does 0 – 60 mph in under nine seconds.
I also like that that it corners like a sports car and does better than 32 mpg.
4×4, suv, chelsea tractors, ‘gas guzzelers’ are great. I just didn’t have the foresight to afford one. Boy, if I had, I would have two.
I just like the idea that I can reverse over some nasty little Renault Clio (for US readers a particularly annoying little tin box traditionally advertised on British TV by extremely supercilious French actors) without even noticing the screams below.
Personally I’ve always regarded the Range Rover as the libertarian answer to the left wing’s Citroen 2CV.
Ah yes the Citroen 2CV!
A car designed for vegetarians.
Because it couldn’t go fast enough to kill anything!
Jonathan says he doesn’t agree with Appleyard yet repeats exactly the same misconceptions about SUVs and their drivers with only a bunch of conjecture as evidence. I wrote a blog entry HERE to explain why I love my SUV so much and why those who hate them are ignorant, joyless morons. 🙂
Additionally: almost all the figures used in these arguments are bollocks, because they are based on “per mile” or “per km”. But the distance you drive isn’t fixed: you choose. The figures that matter are “per year”. A parked car guzzles no gas.
mIIp, speaking for myself, I am an individualist. I extend everybody the opportunity to be unique. But probabilities are way higher than most other vehicle types that these two vehicles I named will have self absorbed and inattentive drivers. In the split second judgements of defensive driving, probabalistic assumptions are very useful.
My family has owned 4 Subarus and I’m with Bruce on the merits. But Subaru drivers do not have the same personality profile as the Caddy/Lincoln Escalade/Navigator owners. (Which I assume equates approximately with Chelsea tractor drivers.)
Bruce, sailplane?
Dearieme, John Wright says in his link he and his wife log 25,000 miles per year. I personally don’t think it matters, but it does conflict with your statement.
John, you state in your link “The real reason for SUV-vilification is their lower rate of MPG (miles per gallon)”. Not in my case. Remember, I log many thousand miles per year in a motorhome. No, it’s purely the driving manners of the typical luxury SUV operator. That’s all.
In the U.S., SUV-haters find themselves embarrassed whenever a major blizzard hits, which happens in almost every state every two or four or ten years, depending on latitude. When a blizzard hits, you can count on SUV-drivers to volunteer to bring doctors and nurses to and from work, and often to carry sick people and women in labor to the hospital from houses that ordinary ambulances can no longer reach. Of course, as soon as the snow melts, everyone else starts bitching about them again.
Midwesterner: yes. That one was a two seat Grob Twin Astir
Bruce, I savored every one of the pics (well, almost all. Some humans were inexplicably in a couple of them 🙂 I sail ice-boats. It’s the closest I can get to flying. (Really flying, not boarding at gate 26G flying.) Maybe some day …
Dr. Weevil, it’s easy to spot those condescending SUV owners in a blizzard. They’re the ones who think with four wheel drive they can drive twice as fast and stop twice as quick. They fly past me moments before I crawl past them. Usually they’re fastened to someone else’s back bumper.
Thanks for the post and the comments. I’m not sure I can be supported or otherwise as the article was an attempt at a rational assessment of the issue. Unlike, most Samizdatists, I happen to think anthropogenic global-warming is happening. But, even if you don’t think that, it is clear that politics, here in Europe and in the US, is moving against high emission vehicles. So it should, for non-believers also, because it is crazy to be dependent on Saudi oil.
The name “Chelsea Tractor” as a derogatory term is a huge give away. For a start the use of “Chelsea” assumes London is the centre of the world and everyone lives in town.
Chelsea being a well healed area speaking of it with such contempt betrays the speaker’s contempt for the sort of person they imagine may live there, i.e. the rich and possibly posh.
So the term “Chelsea Tractor” would appear to be largely an envy/class hate term, probably coined by Londoners.
Now that’s out in the open we can see the Green/Left wing bias for what it is – 4X4s are the new foxhunting.
The fact of the matter is that once you get beyond the lights of the town public transport is largely rubbish. In addition any heavy rain, or almost any snow at all has a much greater impact outside of a conurbation. There 4WD makes a massive difference in road holding and stability. As pointed out elsewhere they don’t actually have a greater footprint than many other vehicles, they are just perceived that way.
I think it is very narrow-minded to think that the “only reason” to dislike SUVs is mpg. It is a cop-out, actually. An attempt to ride the coat-tails of the green backlash.
I dislike them in the same way I dislike BMWs and vans, in fact the drivers of SUVs tend to combine the worst of the two. and, in general, they tend to be incredibly UGLY. The SUVs, not the drivers.
Land Rovers and Subarus (Forester/Outback) are not included in this sweeping generalisation borne from personal experience, as most who own them need the 4×4 on a daily basis (I also have a soft spot for boxer engines). However the Forester seems to be mutating into something less subtle as they years go by, which is worrying.
I have little need of an SUV, driving a 1993 MB 280TE E-Class wagon, which gives me 7 seats, supreme build quality, effortless long distance cruising. It also manages to provide consistent mpg little worse than your average euro tin box of similar cost. It should also last to 20 years plus and still be worth something to someone after that. Another MB E-class estate or a Subaru Outback is a likely replacement. The 1993 MB is a low-key but handsome beast, whereas most SUVs have looks only a mother could love (“So ugly the midwife smacked the mother” etc.).
Alisa, you are not alone, I suspect the total net CO2 of an old Merc is well below that of some Toyota “Pious”.
Manuel, no need to be so touchy. Cool it. It is quite possible to both support the right of drivers to have the vehicles they want and to question the motives of certain “Greens” while at the same time point out that drivers of SUVs can often be terrible. So can drivers of other types of vehicle.
Bryan, not all libertarians flatly deny human-caused global warming as a theory, although some do. I question the statist approach to dealing with the issue. I am actually quite interested in market-led solutions to certain problems, such as resource scarcity, over-fishing, etc.
“Chelsea Tractor” is a term mostly used to describe people and their SUV/4×4 who buy a BMW X5, Range Rover, Forester, Touareg etc. but never actually venture beyond a London postcode in it, thus rendering useless the point of actually owning that class of vehicle. It is only really derogatory when applied in that sense of its meaning, although the unpleasant Ken Livingstone and his 2CV-driving brethren now apply it to all and sundry – not just SUV owners but anyone driving a car bigger and better than their own.
Jonathon: What you are failing to see is that drivers of any other types of car are often terrible too. There is nothing special or unique about the class of people who drive SUVs.
You are letting your perception beat out your brain. As someone already said, you notice SUV drivers more because their vehicles are above your eyeline. The people who drive them aren’t any better or worse drivers than the people who drive Ford Escorts.
Midwesterner: thanks for the kind words. Those pics were taken by a friend when I took him for his first glider flight at Paraparaumu several years ago. He subsequently learned to fly and has soloed although other things seem to have distracted him from flying recently … in the last four months he has got a job as a lecturer, bought a house, submitted his PhD, and gotten married. I’m not sure if tht means he’ll have time for flying again soon… 😉
Ice yachts sound very cool (no pun intended). Some of our gliding club members also sail sand yachts on the beach 1 km from the airfield. A century or so ago, stage coaches were able to travel about 200 km on that beach, interrupted only by half a dozen rivers.
This sort of post seems to bring out a lot of prejudices. Most of these prejudices tend to opinions of how others are behaving wrong or how others should behave. Very statist thinking n’est pas.
Libertarians and freedom lovers should be concerned mostly about what they can do themselves for themselves.
I am a proud Jeep Cherokee owner (I’ have had it 10 years and it is, surprisingly for an american car, the most reliable vehicle I have ever owned – and I have had BMWs and Peugeots too). Quite aside from the mobility when it snows, getting to off the beaten track locations in comfort and its high ground clearance making several additional parking options available, my biggest reason for a SUV or simply a BIG CAR of any description is safety. Your survival chances in a big car are much greater than in a small car. My sister in law was once sideswiped by a lorry on the M25 motorway and walked away without a scratch. If she were in anything smaller than the big petrol guzzling BMW 735 she was driving at the time she would not have been so lucky.
From the personal economics point big gas guzzlers tend to be very cheap on the second hand market. Compared to the capital outlay on a car, the petrol costs for the average user are actually very minor so buying a small thin skinned death trap on wheels that runs on the smell of an oil rag is not necessarily the most economical option.
Alisa said it all. One of the things that I find most annoying about the greens is the fact that even if all their doom-mongering is 100% correct they invariably go for the wrong targets. A Merc diesel is vastly more environmentally sensible than a Prius because they last practically forever. Have you noticed the Prius is a little pricey for a car in it’s class? What do you think that says about the environmental impact of it’s manufacturing.
Mid,
The ice-yacht thing reminds me of a question I’ve been pondering (based on a BoingBoing article). What is the maximum speed, relative to wind speed that can be attained by a wind-powered vehicle?
The roads are so bad in Britain that SUV’s make more and more sense. What with “traffic calming measures” and general neglect a RAV4 seems like the rational choice.
The reason a snarky little Communist fuck like Ken Livingstone makes them the target of his regular Hate Weeks is that he is a snarky little Communist fuck. QED.
“What you are failing to see is that drivers of any other types of car are often terrible too.”
Spend some serious time with a motorcycle on the streets, and you’ll soon come to righteously despise all cagers. They’re all idiots, and they’re still trying to kill me even now that I’m on four wheels.
Speaking of which, it was good to have all four of them driving the other day here where Daisy Hollow is set just about right in the middle of The Vampire State (“New York”). For one thing, I had some off-road maneuvering to do around the place in order to put the snowplow on the John Deere 316 yard tractor ahead of this storm. (This place is not in the lake-effect band that’s been getting all the newstime lately, and we really hadn’t had much snow at all this year.) I drive a 2000 Ford Explorer which has no rear seat, just for stuff like this: I can put a relative lot of gear in it and move with authority when I have to.
Where I live, nobody’s attitude about these vehicles counts unless they have to put up with this sort of thing.
John K,
The real reason Ken Livingstone can bitch about other people’s cars is that he can always get a taxi and bill it to the London taxpayer.
This sort of stuff has been going on for years. I was outraged when I first learned that VAT is charged on second-hand commercial vehicles. That really helps folk trying to start a small business on little cash.
Funny how people are ready to criticise SUV-haters as basically engaging in class warfare, and then immediately claim all 2cv drivers are lefty greens. Either you can make generalisations about car owners or you can’t, make your mind up.
Most of the country dwellers I know drive knackered old fiestas or volvo estates, with a few ancient landy’s knocking about. The SUV’s belong to ex londoners in their brand new 5 bedroom barn conversions – the kind of people for whom size is apparently important.
People hate them because they are ugly symbols of conspicuous consumption. It’s no more unreasonable a hatred than that of Vauxhall Corsa’s with tinted windows and spoilers, except that favourite ride of the mechanically minded chav is still far better looking than a modern SUV. And although the chav might cut you up, he probably won’t double park to drop his kids off at prep school and then stand there chatting for 5 minutes with his flashers on while the rest of the traffic has to go round him. There’s no reason or logic behind it. I hate SUVs in the same way I hate Che T-shirts and ‘baby on board’ stickers. I don’t want to penalise people for owning them, I just want to laugh at them publicly for it. Surely not too much to ask?
Good question. As far as I know, iceboats are the most efficient sailing machines we’ve got, and I suppose a really good one running on perfect ice etc. might get to 4-5 times wind speed, for a very particular wind speed. It might go 100Mph in a 20Mph wind – but it’s hard to imagine one reaching 300 in a 60Mph wind.
But, if you start to imagine scenarios of maglev boats made of yet-to-be invented ultra-light materials – who knows. A vehicle mounted on elevated rails would be able to have sails both above and below it, thus removing the heeling force. Don’t know how much that would gain you.
Finally, if you count solar wind as wind, then the top speed will get pretty high 😉
J,
Thanks for that. I couched it in terms of an ice-boat because obviously that’s the closest you’re likely to get to a frictionless ride.
Now, here is the real problem: sorry can’t find it on BoingBoing but basically it was about a trolley-like device. It was claimed that this thing would roll along at the prevailing wind-speed by itself just because it was blown along but it’s little wheels would drive a prop which would keep it going slightly faster than the prevailing windspeed.
It sounded like a crock to me.
Now, I’ve done a bit of compressible flow and I know enough to know that fluids are tricky and frequently counter-intuitive so it was puzzling me despite my initial feeling that such a device is violating thermodynamics and that if it had been accurately clocked travelling faster than the wind it was probably because the road it was on went slightly downhill.
As far as the solar wind is concerned I have a little solar windmill which my arts educated wife finds deeply disturbing and trying to tell her about the Poynting vector and Maxwell’s equations really doesn’t help. To be fair to her, she translates from Russian for a living and that looks almost as much like gibberish to me as vector calculus looks to her. She calls much of math a collection of “logical fairy tales” and weeps at self-assessment tax forms. She looked at me like I was raving when I gave her a brief explanation of transfinite set theory and was greatly amused by my bowdlerized account of Josiah Willard Gibbs’ Grand Canonical Ensemble. Needless to say, she wouldn’t know a Hamiltonian from a Fourier Transform. I once showed her an expansion to fourth order of the disturbing function in an old celestial mechanics text book and I thought she was going to have some sort of fit.
What a great thread!
About iceboats. J’s got it pretty close. 4-5 times is the commonly stated amount. It has everything to do with two facters, runner drag and air drag. Coefficent of (air) drag goes up exponentially with speed. This is the self limiting factor.
The best ice is glass smooth, black (perfectly clear) and probably just near freezing temperature.
I have personally sailed at probably about 35-40mph in winds of 5mph and less on perfect ice with carefully alligned runners. But when the wind builds you lose those big ratios. All of the records are set in totally nukin conditions.
The world record was trapped on Lake Winnebago(?) back in the ’30s and was somewhere near 140mph. The big heavy boats are still fast. I watched Deuce go out for a ride in moderate air on Mendota one evening with light snow cover on the ice and one of the crew later said when his GPS indicated in the 110s he put it away and held on.
This is my clubs FAQ page.
And here is a video(Link) that I found an youtube that shows and sounds like a good day iceboating, both as a passenger and a spectator. This is exactly what it sounds like. Realize that they are sailing the shortest runnered, smallest sailed underpowered slow boat. The newer DNs are generally far more optimized. Also, realize that when you are racing, there are 10 to 40 or more boats in close proximity doing the same thing.
Also, while the fastest course is close hauled deep down wind, if you go dead down wind you slow way down. Simple explanation is that you have to capitalize on the difference between the surface you are on and the wind speed. If you can do this well, I don’t see why there should be any theoretical limit beyond drag.
J- What you patently fail to acknowledge in your analysis of your own hatred of SUVs is that your criticism implies an ability to judge the personal choices of others in the first place. All that matters when I want to drive an SUV is that I want to drive it. I sit in it, I feel good in it. Period. That’s the *ONLY* valid concern, whether I like it or not. It’s none of your damned business.
You’re perfectly entitled to your opinion, of course. And I hold in contempt the same kinds of road behaviour that you do. But not all opinions are equal, and your happens to be lacking. Your opinion is actually more of a prejudice: no actual data is involved, merely the ramblings of a grumpy man.
I don’t walk around pointing at kids in modified Vauxhall Corsas declaring them to be idiots (though many of them are). The grown-up version of laughing at each others’ preferences in the playground is to simply acknowledge that people are different and enjoy different things. Libertarianism springs from this worldview; the most adult of all the political philosophies.
Maybe you’re not as suited to it as you thought?
NickM,
Interesting problem. Imagine your truck on frictionless rails and the wind coming in almost but not quite at right angles to it. Raise the flat sail perpendicular to the wind direction and assume there is no air resistance from any component of motion parallel to the sail, and that the sail eventually matches the component of the air’s motion perpendicular to the sail. How fast must the truck move to be moving entirely across the wind, with no component with it?
(Of course an ice boat would just slide sideways – the above only works if you’re on rails.)
The best analogy I can think of is surfing. If you travel in the same direction as the wave (perpendicular to the wavefront) you can obviously travel no faster than it, but if you are allowed to travel along the length of the wave, you can accelerate without limit, your trajectory getting closer and closer to parallel. I seem to recall something about electrons in plasmas performing a similar feat.
Nice trick with the fourth-order disturbing function. 🙂
Pa, I didn’t understand much of that, I’m sure Nick did, but I did get a couple of things. Yes it is like surfing. And just like surfing, drag is the limiting factor on top speed.
I forgot that course because we don’t race ‘left and right’ with iceboats because that gets very scary very quickly. When doing a left/right speed run, if you dump the mainsheet at a high enough speed relative to the wind, the sail flogs (flutters like a flag) and the drag causes the front of the boat to get light or lift. That can be interesting.
As for iceboats sliding sideways, occasionally iceboats will spin out, but far more common, as the effort (wind) pushes harder on a slip-free CLR (center of lateral resistence) the boat hikes up, just like it would on non-captive rails.
Regarding the Chelsea tractors, it seems obvious to me that we are discussing two different things. Luxury SUVs and the people who drive them.
As someone who has regular need for four wheel drive, I prefer Subarus and Jeeps. When I see some one driving a Lincoln Navigator or a Cadillac Escalade, I think “waste of money, waste of time, but none of my business.”
But as a different matter entirely, yes I exercise prejudice when making snap defensive driving decisions. It’s only sane. John Wright is probably a very good driver (I assume so, he comments here 🙂 but that doesn’t change the typical behaviour of the demographic, who Julian defined with the qualification “but never actually venture beyond a London postcode in it”, which I took to mean people that wanted one for reasons other than having gotten stuck one too many times. These people in the US gravitate towards Luxury SUVs and a disproportionate number of them drive in a particular way.
There are other types of vehicles who’s drivers I expect certain behavoir from as a probability. Anybody who claims they don’t do this is delusional or a bad driver.
> What is the maximum speed, relative to wind speed
> that can be attained by a wind-powered vehicle?
Modern gliders travel at anywhere from 45 to 60 times the (vertical) windspeed at their optimum flying speed of generally around 60 knots (110 km/h). The minimum windspeed to do this is about 1 knot vertical speed, the maximum (for gliders designed to also be able to efficiently circle tightly at 90 km/h in a thermal) is currently limited by structural strength and flutter considerations to about 160 knots (300 km/h). At that speed they are less efficient and are only travelling at about 20 – 30 times the windspeed. All the same, doing 160 knots off a 5 – 8 knot wind isn’t bad!
Of course the major component of the wind is normally horizontal, not vertical. Mountains, hills, and even beaches & sand dunes are all excellent devices for persuading the wind to have a vertical component. A 30 degree slope will give a vertical windspeed of 50% of the total windspeed.
Here is a short clip of a friend of mine doing something around 140 knots along the beach in a total wind of about 15 knots. He’d done the last ten km like that and the start of higher cliffs is the chance to transition back to more conventional flying. Pilots are now travelling several hundred km in such a manner along NZ’s west coast beaches. Here’s another short clip showing higher altitude flight, including ridge running.
Here are the current gliding world records. The longest flight so far is 3009 km. Note gliding record flights must occur entirely during the hours of legal daylight, so the *average* speed in a 15 or 16 hour flight is around 200 km/h.
Speeds for out and return flights (destination declared before takeoff) are lower than for totally free-form flights (route decided inflight) but are still 247.49 km/h for a 500 km flight and 199.79 km/h for a 1000 km flight.
Speeds for triangles (shortest leg at least 25% of the total) are lower still because you can’t do them along a single mountain range, but you’re still looking at nearly 200 km/h for a 500 km triangle and 170 km/h for a 1000 km triangle, dropping to 120 km/h for a 1500 km triangle (which is also the largest triangle ever flown, so they weren’t going for speed as much as just getting there).
Hope that answered your question about wind-powered vehicles somewhat 🙂
Nick: I was just quoting from the article Jonathan linked to. As to Prius, I wouldn’t be so sure: you don’t necessarily price your product based on your costs, but rather on your target market, i.e. how much do you think you can get for it. Most people have to be past worrying about their next meal before they start worrying about the planet.
BTW, your wife sounds like a very atypical Russian:-)
p.s.
See what free men can do…
Midwesterner-
“I’m sure John Wright is a very good driver…”
How perceptive of you! Seriously, I make no claim to being a good driver and I’m not sure that the dynamic of the bigger vehicle demands a better driver. There seems to be an oft-repeated claim here that SUV-drivers are ‘unproportionately’ worse drivers than those who drive other vehicles. Can anybody prove this? Are there figures or studies or reports or surveys that shows that more SUVs than other kinds of vehicles are involved in accidents, for example? I think we’re suffering here from the old symptoms of prejudice, pure and simple. We’re all guilty of it, from time to time. I’m merely pointing it out in this case because I think SUVs are ‘unproportionately’ vilified!
At least for me, John, I only claim they are worse in certain ways. When I see any car modified for a particular function I expect it to see it used in that way. This applies to virtually all modifications, factory or aftermarket. Lowered cars with extra wide tires and loud exhausts are generally not driven like minivans. I expect (and usually see) them to make jackrabbit starts and stops with lots of cutting and darting. Those minivans actually are quite often full of kids with a ‘soccer mom’ or dad distracted by children. Beat up pickups with shock absorbing towing hitches and stock racks typically are (around here) seen hauling heavy farm wagons or a small number of livestock or feed.
Luxury SUVs are factory (and possibly some aftermarket as well) modified for cocooning. And, not surprisingly, they have disproportionate share of drivers who are shut off from the outside world. I don’t think the danger comes from the size of the vehicles (all though I have twice had my normal sized car backed into by short people driving minivans!) but rather from the nature of the drivers.
I actually don’t think they have a disproportionate share of the accidents either (except in snow and ice where they seem to think they are immune to weather in their cocoons), mostly it appears to be a justifiable reputation for inattentiveness.
Seriously, I doubt you could be one of them because I have a hard time imagining commenters here being prone to cocooning. That just some how doesn’t compute.
Midwesterner- Generally you’re probably right; the SUV cocoons very well. It’s comfortable, with many amenities, large, homey, and, well- I’d easily be able to live in mine. Its greatest benefit, then, may just present us with its best criticism. That’s ok. My problem is rather with irrational anti-SUV prejudice, which is moronic and often based on the idea that consumerism or luxury or consumption of a certain degree is bad or evil or in need of curtailing in some way. I prefer a world in which everyone can drive whatever vehicle makes them happiest, and screw what everyone else happens to think. (BTW, where I live there are more SUVs and pickups than there are smaller cars, so few people get offended by my gas-guzzler.)
Re 4X4s.
I live in the country.
For years I have seen the good sense in having a 4X4. Occasionally getting stuck, or cut off, and borrowed a Landrover from time to time..
I finally had enough spare cash to upgrade and got a (not the most fab) second-hand Vauxhall Frontera.
It is in reasonable condition and has some luxury end features, but it fitted the criteria I was looking for including being great for two large dogs in the back as well.
We also keep a small vehicle for town driving where possible.
I drive reasonably, I try where ever possible to take the green option, simply to avoid waste, if for no other reason.
What I REALLY take exception to, is being attacked, vilified and/or penalised, for having made a reasonable, responsible, best solution available at the time, decision.
This hatred/attack on 4X4s is clearly only tenuously related to facts in the real world and actually ‘driven’ by jealously, prejudice and hatred.
If similar generalisations to those routinely bandied about in the, “Great Attack on the 4X4 and any one who drives/owns one”, were applied say on racial grounds, those (especially the green/left) using them, would immediately brand the arguments as racist and recoil in absolute horror.
They are quite comparable, if you think about it – and the reasoning behind them often muddled and suspect, more a thin justification really.
For some reason they see no problem in this case though.
These people are coercive and seem to want to force everyone to behave the way they want them to, oh and to punish those they don’t like, or disagree with for some reason.
The Business Online article is interesting. I had suspected that it was no accident that Peter Hain called for city bonuses to be donated to charity. There is a growing frustration amongst people like myself that the rich are growing richer at our expense. For me personally it never used to be a problem. But now to even afford a basic house is almost impossible. Another section of the population is quite happy to take advantage and exploit me by forcing me to rent from them and, in effect, pay for their pension. Now we have the possibility of road pricing and the threat that that represents to my livelihood. These forces along with immigration, globalisation, rapid economic development and the closing in of our personal liberty all conspire to concoct a rather explosive mix in my opinion. I just hope the direction changes in government soon.
Actually, I think a copper-bottomed case could be made against Che T-shirts and ‘baby on board’ stickers.
And no, I won’t lecture you on how to be a good libertarian. But then I don’t drive an SUV and rather enjoyed your rant. Even if I owned an SUV dealership, I think I’d’ve still enjoyed your rant… 🙂
Come on, chaps — surely old J can take a few rollicking potshots at the conspicuous consumption of modern urbanites, without being told he’s being judgemental, guilty of prejudice, or whatever? What is this place? The GLC?
Throughout this post and thread, the vast majority of those who are taking (tongue in cheek) potshots, are aiming at a very particular type of driver, that only happens to be associated with a particular vehicle.
Like J points out, these same people have not the least qualm about using the same tactic against 2cv (whatever they are) drivers when it suits them.
I got a kick out of this post and thread and enjoyed the opportunity to take a few shots myself. But nobody would ever mistake the ~30 year old Jeep J20 parked out behind the barn for a luxury SUV, so it’s not exactly self-deprecating.
Similar attacks are made on the drivers of other vehicles. In my area, it’s common knowledge that all middle-aged to old men who drive old vans are child molesters, only lesbians drive Toyota trucks or Subaru station wagons, old impotent men are the ones who buy convertibles, unless said convertibles are Volkswagen Beetles, in which case the driver is a 19-year-old suburban blonde, and only Asians put spoilers, chrome, and ghost lights on Honda hatchbacks.
Now, I drive a Toyota, have a short haircut, and own several Indigo Girls CD’s, but I’m still rather unqualified to be a lesbian.
Also, there’s nothing wrong with Che t-shirts. I wore one to the Republican caucus last time around. There’s also nothing wrong with Che, especially now that he’s dead.
Lastly, this is the wrong thread for telling people how to be a libertarian or not be a libertarian. We have a whole ‘nuther thread for that.
Except in the UK they would do exactly that. If you own an SUV now, and a Jeep or Landrover falls into that category regardless of age, you will have to pay a massive increase in the London Congestion Charge (£25 to drive into London, as opposed to £8 for other cars), a vastly increased annual Road Tax Fund licence and if you live where I do in Richmond, Surrey you will have to pay up to three time the usual parking fee – although that applies to any luxury vehicle as well.
It’s not a prejudice born out of hatred of the vehicles per se but of a specific type of driver, namely the busy mother or au pair who has to use the SUV or ‘people carrier’ to drop children off at various schools, after-school events, parties, shops and so on and so forth. The usual NuLabour kneejerk reaction has been to try and stop those parents from buying, or using, large wheelbase cars because of the overcrowding and traffic delays that occur when you do have several hundred cars bunched up in a small suburban street with the occupants seemingly blissfully unaware of the surrounding chaos.
Regarding the behaviour of SUV drivers – they are by no means alone. Billy Beck mentioned above that once you’ve driven a motorcycle you hate all car drivers, and I can only concur.
As I like to drive with a bit of speed in and around town, I make it a personal imperative to be ultra-aware of what is going on around me – that means checking my mirrors just prior to every manouvre and even every four or five seconds anyway – regardless of what manouvres I may be considering. Yet car drivers – on the whole – only seem to get the urge to check their mirrors when reversing up the drive, or when changing lanes on a motorway (that is, if they get the urge at all).
Recently I upgraded the tyres on my motorcycle to improve tight cornering at speed. Apart from the joy of such cornering, my other motive for doing this is that I am sick and tired of having to slow down before a corner because the guy in the car in front of me is about to encroach onto the motorcycle lane. Usually this is because either (a) he hasn’t checked his mirrors and so doesn’t know I am just about to overtake, (b) he has checked his mirrors but doesn’t care, or (c) he is just incapable of cornering whilst staying in lane.
That’s not a complaint levelled at SUV drivers – but car drivers in general (they just don’t check their mirrors or stay in lane or care very much about road courtesy). Needless to say, with the new tyres I feel more confident in zipping past them and taking the corner at a 60 degree angle.
I would like to thank the readers in advance for reading this incredible, amazing, piece of poetry I was inspired to write, dedicated to the the contributors before me……..
You all are poor
I am not
If you have to even worry about gas prices
SUV buyer u are not
I dont care how a gallon cost
Thats why i drive my SUV (2006 Navigator)
All over your little lanes
And chat and laugh
And swerve and laugh more
Becase it is you who is lost
The motorcycles who think they cool
Some are
When I get cut off by little biker man
A little more of my compassion dies
I drive slow cause I can
No consequence for slow
But you my friend are going to pay the price
Buy a big SUV
It will love you back
Dont cry about gas
Cry about that crappy JCPenny card you max out
Recycle if you really care