4 wheel drivers
Just as I thought. From a book review in the Washington Monthly:
According to market research conducted by the country’s leading automakers, Bradsher reports, [Sport Utility Vehicle] 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.” [Link from Arts & Letters Daily].
![Cadillac Escalade: 2.56 tonnes, 345 horsepower. Tremble, you in that Honda Civic! [Image from cadillac.com]](images/cadillac4x4.jpg)
It's true from my experience. Someone I know crashed her SUV the other morning in the snow storm. No other vehicles were involved. But that just means she was at fault, I guess. heh. Even still, she proudly stated how safe SUVs are. And of course they're not, not even for the person in them. But she believes they are safe for the person inside them. And when asked "What about the poor sob they hit?" She admitted that she doesn't care, that she's only concerned with her own safety and that of her passengers.
I wrote my blog post after having that conversation. Before I even found this "Bumper Mentality" book review. It was a coincidence. Or was it a coincidence? Or is it just that people are finally feeling it's necessary to wake people up to the fact that SUVs are not safe?
Idiots with oversized toys loudly engaging in compensatory behaviours... Sort of like your average gun-ownership-rights advocate, actually.
I drive for a living in Chicago, Illinois USA and SUV's are a bigger hazard than taxis. I can count on a taxi to cut across traffic to get to a fare, to run red lights and such, they're consistent.
SUV drivers are more distracted, convinced of their primacy, and unaware of their own vunerability. They're not the largest vehicles on the road.
What's more, when faced with the occasional blizzard conditions, they burn up their transmissions trying to plow through snow above the bumper! That gives me a great big satisfied laugh, I have to tell you. Even the site of a Mercedes SUV, sitting on it's own hood, spun around facing the wrong way on a one way street has it's own form of humor (no one was hurt, other than egos and paint jobs). D'Oh!
When travelling in the Southwest, where utility vehicles are used for what they're designed for, not toting Starbucks latte's, folks drive them like regular vehicles. It's refreshing.