Posted on 05/09/2005 6:52:14 AM PDT by MississippiMasterpiece
It's a Saturday morning on San Leandro's Marina Boulevard auto row, and the big SUVs have been sitting on the lots, waiting for someone to come in and start that dealer dollar dance that ends up with the customer slightly bewildered but paying a lot less for that vehicle than he thought he was going to.
Once in a while, there are takers, although the dealer has to discount the SUV heavily just to get it moving.
Salvador Sotello, for example, recently paid F.H. Dailey Chevrolet in San Leandro $41,000 for a new Chevy Tahoe LT (yes, with leather) SUV that had a sticker price of $58,000. The sale was an anomaly in what is otherwise a pretty dismal selling season. "It's been pretty quiet," saleswoman Crystal Gonzalez said the other day. "Been pretty slow."
At Broadway Ford in Oakland, the grilles of the Mustangs, SUVs and the lone Thunderbird smile at the passing traffic, but the showroom is empty, it appears, of customers; several salesmen are in sight. Up at Albany Ford-Subaru, salesman Myers Howard, sitting a few feet away from a big Ford pickup truck, says things on the Ford side of the showroom "are slow." That might be the understatement of the day.
Just this past week, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. underwent the humiliation of seeing their credit ratings reduced by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services to the status of junk. The reasons are becoming clear -- the two big companies can't sell much of what they produce.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I could buy a Sherman tank if I pleased. Should I have to do so to get decent vision on the road?
"It was a statement of fact. LOS was blocked by the SUV. No one blamed him for the accident, least of all the Georgia State Patrol which investigated. I'm sorry if you felt the statement was an indictment."
It certainly appeared that you were making an indictment. After all, one could conclude from your statement that had the SUV not 'blocked the line of sight' then the accident would not have occured. I just found it curious that you would say the SUV 'caused' the accident when you obviously overlooked the fact that the driver of the other car was, by definition, going to fast and probably following too closely.
If that ever happens to you, you can tell their Insurance that the big bad SUV blocked your line of sight and that it was their fault. In fact, get a team of lawyers and press charges. Tell the Judge that the SUV blocked your sight and you couldn't avoid the accident. See what happpens.
If it happened to me, I'd be as dead as the folks it did happen to, and I wouldn't have to worry about it.
They zip around cars here on the freeways. Maybe their thought is this: I have a bigger vehicle that you don't want to collide with therefore you'll let me have my way.
I think those elements are so ugly...I didn't realize they got such good gas mileage though.
I understand they no longer teach reading comprehension in public schools, so the confusion is not entirely your fault. If you will please tell me what part of that you do not understand, I will make an attempt to break it down into small words for you.
Yes, I'm quite aware of what is involved in obtaining a commercial driver's license.
"Tragedy of the Commons" bump
Hope I got everybody... sorry for the "mass" post but since I have pretty much the same thing to say to everyone on this topic, I might as well get all at once.
The case against SUVs:
1) A SUV involved in a crash will do twice the damage as an equivalent passenger car based on mass alone. By buying an SUV you double the crash risk of everyone else on the road. This has a real cost in human casualties - your fellow countrymen who die unnecessarily every day because of people who buy vehicles far too large for their needs. Every mistake by a SUV driver has twice the consequences. Add in that SUV bumpers are at a different height than car bumpers, and you remove a major protective measure in case of a crash.
2) Line of sight - this is a big one, and it affects nearly every aspect of driving. If you cannot see past or through another vehicle, the amount of information with which you have to anticipate its movements drops dramatically. Not only does this cause more accidents with the SUV itself, but also causes more accidents with vehicles whose sight is obscured. SUVs are basically moving blind spots for cars. Anyone who can't see why this is a major problem shouldn't have a drivers' license. Furthermore, even parked, these vehicles cause trouble for other drivers. If parked next to one, instead of being able to see whether other cars are coming, you basically have to pray that if anyone is coming, they see you - because there's no way in hell you will see them. If you've got SUVs parked on both sides of you, that's double trouble.
Those two are the major issues, and they boil down to more SUVs = more and more damaging vehicle accidents.
After that, there are many other issues, such as people who drive these vehicles as if they were passenger cars, when they are not the size nor maneuverability of passenger cars; people who use their SUVs as weapons; the fact that any given road can accommodate far fewer SUVs than passenger cars (with regard to not only mass but also to line of sight) and road maintenance issues.
Ascribing loathing of SUVs to things like jealousy and fear is a mistake. Having an SUV has substantial effects for other vehicles on the road, and IMHO one should be able to state clearly exactly what those effects are before ever being permitted to have a SUV.
Lastly, the freedom argument is pure arrogance at best. Your freedom to buy an unreasonably large vehicle comes at the cost of my freedom to travel in reasonable safety. I regard this as a theft of my liberty. With all freedom comes responsibility, and those who argue freedom as a reason to allow SUVs cannot but admit that the responsibility has not been shouldered by SUV drivers.
The anti-SUV types are usually petty tyrants who want to tell everyone else what they need and what they should be allowed to have.
Imagine this statement: "anyone injured solely because the SUV in their accident was too big was driving an unreasonably small and unreasonably unsafe vehicle. They should be required to buy bigger, safer cars."
The passenger-car-size vehicles were on the roads first; indeed the roads are built to accommodate that size vehicle. The SUVs, being newcomers, must accommodate themselves to the existing situation rather than vice versa.
not really a discount...the rebate is a one time thing, the oil price will get you, over and over again.
"Especially if those deep discounts hit Texas."
Why?
I have the same question.
That's not much of an explanation. And by my way of thinking, they are more of a passenger car than most other cars. They hold more passengers, hold more passengers more comfortably and transport those more passengers and more comfortable passengers more safely.
What about them makes them not a passenger car?
I guess Fedex and UPS and Schwanns and Pepsi and Coke and so forth will have to conform themselves to your little social engineering experiment too. All of those can be delivered in smaller, car-sized vehicles too.
And school buses? Forget it.
After all, the anti-SUV crowd are so much more noble than the SUV owners.
There is absolutely no scenario that can safely justify your vehicle for hitting something in front of you. Whether its your line of sight being blocked, weather conditions, some idiot slamming on the breaks for no reason, NOTHING! If a vehicle hits another vehicle or obstruction in the road it is 100% their fault without any other outside factors. Period.
I'm sorry that you know somebody who died from this. But the blame lies squarely on the person who was following too closely and did not give themself reaction time.
No, you're still wrong. I'm retired, I don't drive near as much as I used to. I use LESS gas now than I did before, so I'm not "helping to drive up gas costs" at all my friend, and I still will own, drive and enjoy my pickup, although (sigh) I don't have a gunrack...
No, we (Americans) are not the problem concerning fuel in this world, we are the solution, it's time to get the enviro-wackos off our backs, also, who has appointed them as the experts? BTW, I challenge everyone of them I come
across when they play their hand.
Being retired (I'm not IDLE you know, I do other things, look at my profile), I also encourage my grown kids (w/families) and other young people to seriously consider VOLUNTEER investment accounts with Pres. Bush's SS ideas. I've never seen so may people afraid to make money, obviously products of Socialistic teaching in schools.
NO SH*T a LARGER SUV will do more damage in an accident with a SMALLER car!
I like my SUV, I feel safer driving it...if I could just get all of those F*CKING little cars to get out of my way!
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