SUV's are the ones who seem to think they are invincible on the road Agree with that. But the real scary part is us sitting in our Accords can't see in front of them, and are totally dependent upon their ability to see and stop, or avoid, or to create an accident that we can't ditch away from.
Then when they come at you at night the blinding headlights put you at risk of hitting something unexpectedly.
What's the fascination with these things that suck up gas, and normally have one passenger who never takes it off the road?
What's the fascination with these things that suck up gas, and normally have one passenger who never takes it off the road? 1) They are large. People like large cars.
2) They are useful. People like useful cars.
Yes, a lot of them are driven by idiots. Unfortunately, no one has ever come up with a good way of keeping the idiots away from the same things sane people enjoy responsibly.
A lot of people really like the word "ban." I think such people are not worth spitting on.
The latest North American Car Show had very few SUVs that I saw and more vehicles like a SUV/station wagon mix thing. It was a little strange looking. They were lower to the ground than the SUVs. Personally, I don't care for them, but I'm not too keen on some of these 4 cylinder cars. I've ridden in a couple of them and felt like if anything hit the car, it was going to crumple. I know they're good for gas mileage, but a lot of those drivers are quite dangerous on the road. They pull out in front of other cars and don't have the pickup to get to a good speed causing accidents that way
But the real scary part is us sitting in our Accords can't see in front of them, and are totally dependent upon their ability to see and stop, or avoid, or to create an accident that we can't ditch away from. Instead of trying to estimate car lengths, my high school dirver's ed teacher had a simple rule for detrmining how much of a gap you should leave between yourself and the car in front of you. If the car in front of you suddenly slammed on their brakes, if you can't stop before you hit them, then you are following too close.
Following any closer means you are (literaly) putting YOUR life into the hands of a STRANGER. To me anyway, that's unacceptable.
What's the fascination with these things that suck up gas, and normally have one passenger who never takes it off the road? Mainly, because they can carry a buttload of cargo.
My wife and I got sick and tired of driving cars that couldn't fit more than four bags of groceries into the trunk, and having to borrow a friend's truck whenever we made a trip to the home repair store to buy a load of [whatever], or a bunch of plants for the garden, etc.
Now friends borrow *our* vehicle when they need to haul stuff. :-)
SUVs are more practical than pickup trucks, overall.
Plus, while we don't technically drive "off road", we still enjoy being able to drive on less than car-friendly terrain sometimes. My wife was helping a friend work on his paintball field, and it was nice having a vehicle that wouldn't puncture an oilpan if you took it here and there around the field. We don't do that sort of thing often, but having the option is great.
Additionally, Houston sometimes gets torrential rains, and since it's a flat city the roads fill up with water pretty quickly. We can drive the SUV through mini-floods that a low-slung car would have real trouble with.
Finally, our last "practical" vehicle (a hybrid mini-van, almost like a supersized station wagon, they don't make anything quite like that any more) was totalled when a woman ran a red light and broadsided the mini-van while my wife was driving it. The offending Buick's bumper basically ended up in my wife's lap. She was pretty much unhurt (actually, it instantly cured her chronic migraines, but that's another story), but she was literally about one inch from being very seriously injured or killed. Her glasses somehow ended up BEHIND the Buick that hit her. She knows that had she been driving anything smaller or less sturdy than the mini-van, she would *not* have been able to walk away from the accident. So when she went shopping for a replacement, one of the first requirements was, "bigger is better, higher is better, stronger is better".
[Aside: Here's the "nothing else quite like it" mini-van we lost in the accident -- it drove like a car, hauled like a truck, and had a *big* engine for its size:] 