A few days ago this topics list had an editorial that seemed to blame all of the
problems of western civilization of SUV's.  It has taken me a few days to
formulate a rebuttal.  For impact this is a bit of a bare knuckles reply, but
hang on to the main point at the end.  I've copy the original editorial below if
you missed it.  LS

SUVism, A New Hate Crime?
By Lanny Schwartz

 I've owned a SUV for the last 30 years.  I've explored fascinating desert
backroads and marveled at elk in a remote meadow of the Rockies.  My vehicle made
possible a drive to Alaska and two trips on the pipeline highway to the barren
grounds of the Arctic.  I've used my vehicles enroute to getting a Master's and
Ph.D. in ecology, data collected from many remote places.  My wife and I like
cross country camping trips and like the space for the gear.  Nosing down some
remote, soft, or rutted roads we have a greater feeling of security that we might
return safely to the blacktop.  After enduring a number of storm flatted tents we
will soon be pulling a small travel trailer with our truck. The 4wd is a blessing
sometimes, as I like to hunt and fish in remote places.  The weather during such
trips is frequently awful.  Never mind that on wintry roads on the way to work it
is more sure footed than a passenger car.  A pickup with a shell might suffice
for our purposes, but we prefer the hard top of an SUV for security of contents;
our occasional rear seat passengers can be heated or cooled and comfortable.  I
am convinced my SUV saved my life when I hit a deer at 60 mph. Our other car is a
Prism.

 First we hear that the Earth Liberation Front is torching SUVs.   Now, as you
sits smug in your Prius or Metro on an immense moral high ground, staring up at
the taillights of an SUV, perhaps a reminder is in order that stereotyping always
paints with too broad a brush.  All us good environmentalist would likely
disapprove of racial profiling or disparaging comments about women.  Why would
bashing SUV drivers be acceptable?

 "He only bought it because he's insecure and self-centered."  Are SUV's merely a
postage stamp to put over the wounds in our self-esteem?  My marriage is crummy,
should I have an affair or should I buy an SUV?   If people buy them to mend
insecurity, so what?  Few of us have no insecurities and fixes leak out
somewhere.  After air, water, food, and sex, the highest natural drive of humans
is to have a good feeling about ourselves.  We do elaborate things to be able to
think of ourselves as man enough, or feminine, or just as a good or attractive
person.  To these ends hair gets colored, breasts get implanted, trendy brands of
beer and cigarettes get consumed, houses and cars are purchases, makeup applied,
and the right brands of jeans are worn.  We join organizations because we are
good people who help poor defenseless animals or stop the killing of babies, and
so we pat ourselves on the back.  The list of things we do to support our self
image is endless.  Self-centered you say?  Humans are predictable, we always will
do what is in our short or long term self-interest.  Preachy anti-SUV editorial
writers are plenty self-centered.  They say, "Be like me."

 "Why doesn't he just park his car and get off his rump and walk?"  But the
Master said, "Sparrow, to make that statement you must first have the wisdom that
comes from backpacking through the Grand Canyon, scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro, and
climbing the mountains of the Brooks Range and Canadian Rockies for 20 days in
pursuit of Dall sheep and mountain goats.  Also, train for these for years in an
exercise class called Boot Camp."  You say you haven't done these things?    As
you might guess, I have.  I do love to walk in nice places.   I don't like
walking along roads with vehicles going by, sometimes there just isn't enough
time or the distance is too great to walk.  Sometimes the gear necessary needs a
vehicle to haul it.  Drive a mile in my tires before you tell me to walk.

 "Really, isn't there something... like...you know...wrong with his masculinity.
Besides he hunts and there is all the gun inadequacy thing."  To recast in a less
intimate way, do people seek a feeling of power from their vehicles?  Yes!  That
goes back to the days of chariots and beyond.  Is this a character defect, or
merely being human?  In this modern age personal power has been wrestled from our
lives.  We know consciously or at least subconsciously that we no longer have
political power.  That power now resides with the big campaign contributors.
Many workplaces have "productivity" requirements that make jobs nearly inhuman.
People are seeking ways to feel they have a sense of power over their lives.
Perhaps buying an SUV is one of them.  I read that 85% of recreational horseback
rides are women.  Are they seeking power in their lives with the control of a big
and powerful animal?  While on this topic, many SUV's are purchased by women.
They like sitting up higher, the security on bad roads, oh yes, and the powerful
engine.  Some may find feelings of power in owning guns, but most owners just
like to hunt or shoot.  SUV owners have their own reasons and they are legitimate
for them.  It's tough these days to own the power over our lives, but we all need
it and seek it someway.

 "You know, they're all aggressive drivers."   I've driven with the most
aggressive drivers in the world in Italy and Russia, and they drove itty bitty
cars. If I was going to stereotype the worst drivers by car type I would pick
minivan drivers, the soccer moms.  As you drive along in your Windstar 10 mph
below the speed limit, you may see me in your rearview mirror.  I saw your lips,
"Why do all those maniacs have to drive so fast?  The police will thank me for
slowing them down."  "Sorry, I beeped my horn at you, the light's been green for
10 seconds." Turn signals on such vans may be regarded as vestigial organs,
present but unused.

 "SUV's cause such carnage on the highway."  Death rates in SUV's in roll over
accidents are higher than for cars.  The first 4wd I drove was an Army Jeep.  On
the dash was stenciled, "Sudden turns mean sudden death."  Vehicles with a higher
center of gravity do flip over more easily.  Most SUV drivers know this. You can
bet the lawyers were busy and warnings are all over the vehicles and in owner's
manuals.  From the "Unsafe at any speed" Corvair to all classes of vehicles,
there is likely some aspect of design that is suboptimal in some driving
situation.  Do SUV's kill too many innocent people?  A third of all motor vehicle
mortality involves 18 wheelers, another third have some involvement with alcohol
or other drugs, next comes teenage drivers.  The remainder have many causes and
the proportion laid at the bumper of an SUV must be small.  I've not hear any SUV
owner say they bought it for personal safety.  Instead, they say they buy them
for the many attractive features of this style of vehicle.  Would someone buy a
big vehicle for personal safety, even realizing that their safety puts others at
some risk?  You bet!  In an instant!  Florida's roads are just full of old people
driving big cars for that feeling.  Me or you?  It's gotta be you.

 Enough stereotyping and active aggressive writing.  People make choices of
vehicles for all kinds of reasons.  People can't help being people.  Somewhere in
our lives we've been cautioned that we should judge not...; stones and glass
houses..., etc.

  Certainly less that 2% of all miles in an SUV are driven in conditions where
you might need the clearance, four wheel drive, or power. Especially ludicrous
are all the SUV's that I see driving the freeways of Los Angles when I visit
there each Christmas. But, someone could probably argue half of all trips in any
vehicle could be deemed unnecessary.  SUV's do consume a lot of fuel.  My ‘72
Jimmy had a 350 cubic inch V8, 200 horsepower, and got 10 mpg.  My ‘96 SUV had
the same engine, 250 horsepower, but got 70% better gas mileage.  My new SUV has
a smaller engine but 285 horsepower and probably has worse gas mileage.  GM could
have given me less horsepower and more efficiency, but they did not.  The smaller
engine that is in GM's brochure is virtually unavailable.  I tried to get one.
Sometimes the choices in life are tough.

 I think that anti-SUV editorials or this nouveau road rage begs the questions
and looks in the wrong direction for solutions.  SUV's can get better mileage and
energy can be conserved.   Better vehicles with new technologies could become
available, and people will buy them if they are cost effective.  To achieve that
we must work to mend a political system that is broken.  Efforts to increase
fleet milage standards for vehicles or to require improvements in SUV
efficiencies have died at the hands of the best government money can buy.
Sensible energy policy goes begging in a government lead by oilmen.  This "What
would Jesus drive?" campaign asks the wrong moral question.  It should ask, "How
would Jesus vote?" Working for good government and good energy policies is much
harder than writing editorials, inventing slogans, or venting scorn of SUV's. Our
national energy policy does everything but conserve.  SUV's are but a symptom.

> By Stephanie Mencimer, Washington Monthly
> December 20, 2002
>
> Have you ever wondered why sport utility vehicle drivers seem like such
> [expletive deleted]? Surely it's no coincidence that Terry McAuliffe,
> chairman of the
> Democratic National Committee, tours Washington in one of the biggest SUVs
> on the market, the Cadillac Escalade, or that Jesse Ventura loves the
> Lincoln Navigator.
>
> Well, according to New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher's new book, "High
> and Mighty," the connection between the two isn't a coincidence. Unlike any
> other vehicle before it, the SUV is the car of choice for the nation's most
> self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver
> is likely to be.
>
> According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers,
> Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are
> frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about
> parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all,
> they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in
> their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic,
> and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants
> a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited
> interest in doing volunteer work to help others."
>
> He says, too, that SUV drivers generally don't care about anyone else's
> kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them
> rather than with what's practical, and they tend to want to control or have
> control over the people around them. David Bostwick, Chrysler's market
> research director, tells Bradsher, "If you have a sport utility, you can
> have the smoked windows, put the children in the back and pretend you're
> still single."
>
> Armed with such research, automakers have, over the past decade, ramped up
> their SUV designs to appeal even more to the "reptilian" instincts of the
> many Americans who are attracted to SUVs not because of their perceived
> safety, but for their obvious aggressiveness. Automakers have intentionally
> designed the latest models to resemble ferocious animals. The Dodge
> Durango, for instance, was built to resemble a savage jungle cat, with
> vertical bars across the grille to represent teeth and big jaw-like
> fenders. Bradsher quotes a former Ford market researcher who says the SUV
> craze is "about not letting anything get in your way, and at the extreme,
> about intimidating others to get out of your way."
>
> Not surprisingly, most SUV customers over the past decade hail from a group
> that is the embodiment of American narcissism: baby boomers. Affluent and
> often socially liberal, baby boomers have embraced the four-wheel-drive SUV
> as a symbol of their ability to defy the conventions of old age, of their
> independence and "outdoorsiness," making the off-road vehicle a force to be
> reckoned with on the American blacktop.
>
> But as Bradsher declares in his title, this baby boomer fetish is
> considerably more harmful than the mere annoyance of yet another Rolling
> Stones tour or the endless commercials for Propecia. In their attempt to
> appear youthful and hip, SUV owners have filled the American highways with
> vehicles that exact a distinctly human cost, frequently killing innocent
> drivers who would have survived a collision with a lesser vehicle. Bradsher
> quotes auto execs who concede that the self-centered lifestyle of SUV
> buyers is apparent in "their willingness to endanger other motorists so as
> to achieve small improvements in their personal safety."
>
> After covering the auto industry for six years, Bradsher is an unabashed
> critic of sport-utility vehicles and the automakers that continue to churn
> them out knowing full well the dangers they pose. He doesn't equivocate in
> his feeling that driving an SUV is a deeply immoral act that places the
> driver's own ego above the health and safety of those around him, not to
> mention the health of the environment. Ironically, and though most
> supposedly safety-conscious owners don't realize it, SUVs even imperil
> those who drive them.
>
> Road Rodeo
> Ask a typical SUV driver why he drives such a formidable vehicle, and he'll
> invariably insist that it's for safety reasons ? the kids, you know ? not
> because he's too vain to get behind the wheel of a sissy Ford Windstar.
> Automakers themselves know otherwise ? their own market research tells them
> so.
>
> But Bradsher makes painfully clear that the belief in SUV safety is a
> delusion. For decades, automakers seeking to avoid tougher fuel economy
> standards have invoked the fiction that the bigger the car, the safer the
> passenger. As a result, most Americans take it on faith that the only way
> to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing,
> a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange
> disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs.
>
> The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars, 8
> percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a
> high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in
> rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond
> quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by
> scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an
> SUV traveling at high speed. On top of that, SUV roofs are not reinforced
> to protect the occupants against rollover; nor does the government require
> them to be.
>
> Because of their vehicles' size and four-wheel drive, SUV drivers tend to
> overestimate their own security, which prompts many to drive like maniacs,
> particularly in inclement weather. And SUV drivers, ever image-conscious
> and overconfident, seem to hate seat belts as much as they love talking on
> their cell phones while driving. Bradsher reports that four-fifths of those
> killed in roll-overs were not belted in, even though 75 percent of the
> general driving population now buckles up regularly.
>
> While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads
> more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs
> is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five
> others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth
> like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models
> on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in
> SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.
>
> Part of the reason for the high kill rate is that cars offer very little
> protection against an SUV hitting them from the side, not because of the
> weight, but because of the design. When a car is hit from the side by
> another car, the victim is 6.6 times as likely to die as the aggressor. But
> if the aggressor is an SUV, the car driver's relative chance of dying rises
> to 30 to 1, because the hood of an SUV is so high off the ground. Rather
> than hitting the reinforced doors of a car with its bumper, an SUV will
> slam into more vulnerable areas and strike a car driver in the head or
> chest, where injuries are more life-threatening.
>
> But before you get an SUV just for defensive purposes, think again. Any
> safety gains that might accrue are cancelled out by the high risk of
> rollover deaths, which usually don't involve other cars.
>
> Ironically, SUVs are particularly dangerous for children, whose safety is
> often the rationale for buying them in the first place. Because these
> beasts are so big and hard to see around (and often equipped with
> dark-tinted glass that's illegal in cars), SUV drivers have a troubling
> tendency to run over their own kids. Just recently, in October, a wealthy
> Long Island doctor made headlines after he ran over and killed his
> 2-year-old in the driveway with his BMW X5. He told police he thought he'd
> hit the curb.
>
> To illustrate the kind of selfishness that marks some SUV drivers, Bradsher
> finds people who rave about how they've survived accidents with barely a
> scratch, yet neglected to mention that the people in the other car were all
> killed. (One such woman confesses rather chillingly to Bradsher that her
> first response after killing another driver was to go out and get an even
> bigger SUV.)
>
> The tragedy of SUVs is that highway fatalities were actually in decline
> before SUVs came into vogue, even though Americans were driving farther.
> This is true largely for one simple reason: the seatbelt. Seatbelt usage
> rose from 14 percent in 1984 to 73 percent in 2001. But seatbelts aren't
> much help if you're sideswiped by an Escalade, a prospect that looms yet
> more ominously as SUVs enter the used-car market. Not surprisingly, last
> year, for the first time in a decade, the number of highway deaths actually
> rose.
>
> No Roads Scholars Here
> Bradsher blames government for failing to adequately regulate SUVs, but
> doesn't fully acknowledge the degree to which it has encouraged SUV
> production by becoming a major consumer of them. Law enforcement and public
> safety agencies in particular seem enamored of the menacing vehicles, a
> fact on proud display when officers finally apprehended the alleged snipers
> in the Washington, D.C., area and transported them to the federal
> courthouse in a parade of black Ford Explorers and Expeditions.
>
> Judging from the number of official SUVs on the road today, law enforcement
> officials, those most likely to know firsthand the grisly effects of a
> rollover, are enthusiastic customers. Like the rest of America, police
> departments seem to believe that replacing safe, sturdy cars with SUVs is a
> good idea, though it's hard to imagine a more dangerous vehicle for an
> officer conducting a high-speed chase.
>
> Government's taste for SUVs isn't limited to cops and firemen. There's
> hardly a city in America where the mayor's chauffeured Lincoln Town Car
> hasn't been replaced by an SUV. In Virginia, where state officials recently
> discovered that SUVs were wrecking their efforts to meet clean-air
> regulations, a few noted sheepishly that perhaps local governments should
> sell their own fleets, which had ballooned to 250 in Fairfax County alone.
> (A Fairfax County official told The Washington Post that public safety
> officials needed four-wheel drive and large cargo spaces to transport extra
> people and emergency equipment through snow or heavy rain, proof that even
> law enforcement officials misunderstand SUV safety records.)
>
> As Bradsher details, because of their weight, shoddy brakes, and off-road
> tires, SUVs handle poorly in bad weather and have trouble stopping on slick
> roads. What's more, they're generally so poorly designed as not to be
> capable of carrying much cargo, despite the space. A contributing factor in
> the Ford Explorer-Firestone tire debacle was that drivers weren't told that
> their Explorers shouldn't carry any more weight than a Ford Taurus. The
> extra weight routinely piled in these big cars stressed the tires in a way
> that made them fall apart faster and contributed to the spate of rollover
> deaths.
>
> I have a hunch that government officials' justification for buying SUVs is
> mostly a ruse for their real motivation, which is the same as any other SUV
> owner's: image. Officials can safely load up their fleets with
> leather-seated SUVs, whereas using taxpayer dollars to buy themselves, say,
> a fleet of BMW coupes would get them crucified (even though Detroit
> considers SUVs luxury vehicles and designs them accordingly). Police
> departments may claim that they need an SUV to accommodate SWAT teams or
> canine units, but there is no reason that Sparky the drug dog wouldn't be
> just as comfortable in the back of a nice safe Chevy Astrovan.
>
> The same is true for nearly everyone who drives an SUV today. Of course,
> not every SUV owner is gripped by insecurity and a death wish; plenty of
> otherwise reasonable people seem to get seduced by power and size (see
> sidebar).
>
> But if soccer moms and office-park dads really need to ferry a lot of
> people around, they could simply get a large car or a minivan, which
> Bradsher hails as a great innovation for its fuel efficiency, safety, and
> lower pollution. (And minivans don't have a disproportionately high kill
> rate for motorists or pedestrians when they get into accidents.) According
> to industry market research, minivan drivers also tend to be very nice
> people. Minivans are favored by senior citizens and others (male and
> female, equally) who volunteer for their churches and carpool with other
> people's kids. But that's the problem. SUV owners buy them precisely
> because they don't want the "soccer mom" stigma associated with minivans.
>
> While Bradsher does a magnificent job of shattering the myths about SUVs,
> he has a difficult time proposing a solution. Sport utility vehicles have
> become like guns: Everyone knows they're dangerous, but you can't exactly
> force millions of Americans to give them up overnight. And because the SUV
> is single-handedly responsible for revitalizing the once-depressed American
> auto industry, the economy is now so dependent on their production that it
> would be nearly impossible to get them off the road.
>
> Bradsher suggests regulating SUVs like cars rather than as light trucks, so
> that they would be forced to comply with fuel-efficiency standards and
> safety regulations. He also proposes that the insurance industry stop
> shifting the high costs of the SUV dangers onto car owners by raising
> premium prices for SUVs to reflect the amount of damage they cause. But
> these ideas, commendable though they are, fall short of a perfect answer.
>
> Clearly, the best solution would be for Americans to realize the danger of
> SUVs and simply stop buying them. Social pressure can be a powerful
> determinant on car choices, as seen in Japan, the one country where SUVs
> have not caught on because of cultural checks that emphasize the good of
> the community over that of the individual. There are signs that perhaps
> public sentiment is beginning to shift against SUV drivers here, too, as
> activists have begun to leave nasty flyers on SUV windshields berating
> drivers for fouling the environment and other offenses.
>
> But for a true reckoning to take place, image-obsessed Americans will need
> to fully understand the SUV's true dangers, including to themselves,
> before they will willingly abandon it to the junkyard. Spreading that
> message against the nation's biggest advertiser, the auto industry, will
> be tough work. Drivers can only hope that Bradsher's book will cut through
> the chatter.
>
> Stephanie Mencimer is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly.
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