Battle of the SUVs

what a bunch of morons…

Oh yeah, SUV drivers.
There’s a plausible answer in this review of New York Times auto reporter Keith Bradsher’s book High and Mighty:

http://www.alternet.org/story/14839/
Here’s the article’s author on SUV marketing:

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.”

And here she is on the imagined “safety” of SUVs:

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.

As I think about this more, it’s odd how relevant that quote you posted – “SUV drivers generally don’t care about anyone else’s kids but their own” – is to what I saw this morning. The lack of judgment and restraint shown on the road this morning clearly factored into their choice of vehicle too.

I remember being appalled when Wayne first showed up at our place in his SUV. I said, “I can’t believe you bought a friggin SUV”, he replied, “fuck off”. I tried to rationalize the choice by suggesting we go off-roading, but no way – “I’m not taking this thing off-road now, look at the paint job! Maybe when it’s old and beat up.”

Of course, by the time it’s old and beat up it will belong to someone else.

Here is a link to an article on the subject of the American tax loop-hole I mentioned:

http://www.selfemployedweb.com/suv-tax-deduction.htm

Note the list of qualifying SUVs at the bottom.

Alevo wrote, “Any self-respecting truck enthusiast would know that a majority of SUVs are big fucking stationwagons.”

If only; that would represent an improvement. In fact, Subarus really are station wagons, with bottom-heavy “boxer” engines (the pistons are horizontal) and AWD drivetrains, but the vast majority of SUVs are built on a rigid truck frame.

Because the frame doesn’t absorb impacts (the “crumple zone” accordion effect of nearly all car frames), the occupants of SUVs tend to suffer more when their vehicles collide with fixed objects. All of the force of deceleration is absorbed by the body hitting the seatbelt (and the organs hitting the ribcage, and the brain hitting the skull case…) instead of the frame.

In cases where SUVs hit cars, they are so heavy that much of the force of impact is transferred to the other car, resulting in worse injuries and damage than would otherwise be the case. Essentially, the car takes more of the impact on the SUV’s behalf.

SUVs are allowed to be designed to a vastly inferior safety standard because they are regulated as commercial vehicles, not personal vehicles. The reasoning is that the ratio of commercial to personal vehicles is tiny, so there is less risk in making commercial vehicles less safe.

Also, because they are used by companies, the lower safety standard means automakers can sell them for less, helping the economy (this is also where the tax write-off originates).

So how did SUVs come to dominate personal car sales? Blame Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), the law specifying that each automaker must maintain an average fuel economy over its entire fleet. If you want to build a gas guzzler, you must balance it with an econocar.

CAFE was introduced in the 1970s in response to the OPEC oil crisis as a way to improve fuel economy. Unfortunately (and if this is starting to look characteristic to you, give yourself a hand), CAFE rules do not apply to commercial vehicles, mainly for the aforementioned reasons.

Ade, here is where your comment, “I think I blame the manufacturers more than the drivers. Wayne would be perfectly happy behind the wheel of a Cadillac sedan” comes in. In fact, we should blame the loophole that provides a tremendous incentive for automakers to replace those Cadillac sedans with Cadillac Escalades.

Automakers sensed a large latent market demand for big muscle cars, but they were no longer allowed to crank out Chargers and Parisiennes, so they started repackaging their unregulated commercial trucks with back seats and aggressive styling. The result, unofficially, is the SUV.

With oil prices falling all the way through the 1990s (and with America having the lowest gas taxes in the industrialized world), SUVs quickly dominated auto markets, and represented over half of new car sales by the start of the 21st century.

Automakers love them because they’re cheap to build, sell at a premium, and tap directly into buyers’ most visceral reactions. Car buyers love them because they make them feel safe and powerful (facts be damned). Oil companies love them because they consume up to five times as much gas as a car to travel the same distance.

Woah, Canyonero!