Most articles moved to the Main Page

Attention SUV Drivers

Please stop doing the following:

1) Parking in spots which are too small.

Your ass-end is either sticking out into the parking lot, or you are angling over into the next spot because your turning radius is somewhere around 4 miles.

2) Thinking you don't need to slow down on snow or ice.

Yes, you have four wheel drive. Four wheel drive will get you out of a ditch, but it's useless at 60 MPH. Newton's laws still apply: your 3+ ton box on wheels will slide for a long, long time no matter how many wheels are spinning merrily on the ice.

3) Complaining about gas prices.

You knew it got 15 mpg when you bought it, so shut your pie hole.

4) Tailgating.

My little car can stop in about half the distance of your behemoth. If I slam on my brakes, you'll be just as dead/injured as me when you rollover after smashing me.

5) Pretending you will ever drive it through the mountains, deserts, snow drifts, mudpits, jungles, rivers, or anywhere else you see in the commercials.

You drive it to work, the store, and on Friday nights, the porn palace. That's it. You live in the city. You won't ever need to drive up a rocky hill, over construction debris (my personal favorite), or to the top of Angel Falls for a camping trip with your extreme friends.

6) Blinding people with your headlights.

Your headlights are at the level of sane drivers' eyes. Back off a little (see also "tailgating").

7) Pretending you use it to "haul stuff".

You use it to move something too big for a car about once a year, tops. With the money you spend on gas you could rent a real truck when you need it, or just pay to have it delivered. You'd still save hundreds. And besides, if you really needed to carry stuff, you would've bought a pickup truck.

8) Saying that your SUV is "safer".

Yes, if you hit a smaller car, you're less likely to die than the other guy (unless you rollover), but the other guy is more likely to die than if he was hit by a smaller car. If two smaller cars hit, they're likely to both walk away.

Your Urban Assault Vehicle has little or no crumple ability, so if you hit something larger than you, you're more likely to be killed than someone in a smaller car which can properly deform.

You handle like an ocean liner, can't stop without throwing an anchor out the back, and can rollover at highway speeds by having a tire blowout or even by turning the wheel too fast.



Disclaimer: If you live where you actaully need ground clearance and 4WD, then some of these don't apply to you. I imagine that makes up at least 1 or 2 percent of the SUV owners, possibly even 4!



2005-3-4