Yes, they have definitely been marketed based on flawed and skewed safety perceptions that a lot of people have about how they and their family will always be safer in a bigger vehicle. The statistics prove incontrovertibly that this isn't true in the real world, but it resonates with many people's irrational lizard brain perceptions. They narrowly focus on a statistic (survivability in a crash for the vehicle occupants) that is only marginally better in some SUVs and ignore all of the other factors that contribute to safety, such as maneuverability, driver behavior/caution, center of gravity, visibility, and so on. It's the same reasons that riding a bike isn't massively more dangerous than riding in an SUV or pickup, despite the fact that you're far less physically protected: you're also less likely to get in a wreck, and it's likely to be less violent if you do due to the lower weight and speed (especially if it's a single-rider/vehicle accident). But I agree with you: I don't at all understand why the government regulations of vehicle safety don't seem to do much to consider the drivers of OTHER vehicles. Why on earth would they care only about the safety of the vehicle occupants rather than others?

Of course, we also share the road with 18-wheelers that can and do crush almost any other vehicle on the road if they are involved in a crash with them. But I would say that there is a big difference between commercial vehicles that are generally driven by professional drivers with CDLs and a job to worry about keeping and SUVs that are marketed as family vehicles. Same goes for pickups that are actually used for work or farm purposes vs. just because the driver likes the feeling of driving one. SUVs and pickups are being marketed as "lifestyle choices" rather than for a use for which they are appropriate. And that has led to their over-proliferation in places where we don't need so many amateurs driving big trucks around, such as crowded city streets. There's a difference from a big vehicle that exists for necessity and a big vehicle that is purchased because of irrational "safety" concerns.

one word

"u-lock justice"

or is that two words..umm.. or three??? now i am confused

stick it to the man..ya..thats right

I remember when you first did that. I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

Amen to that mirror comment. I would venture to say the over 90% of drivers do not have their mirrors adjusted properly.

I got one better than that: Someone yelled something similar to me.... from a Miata. :rolleyes:

Heh, they need to not throw stones while driving that much of a chick car.

I'm sure there is some law about how their headlights are supposed to be aimed, you may just have found a large group of people who decided to ignore the law because it makes them feel safer. I don't have that happen to me very often, and that's probably due to not driving much, and being a little taller than most people.

Isn't there a new SUV commercial that touts alerting its owner when they don't pay attention. "I was drifting into the other lane when my car alerted me". "I took my eyes off the road for only a minute and would have crashed if not for my vehicle".

I'm all for increased safety, but shouldn't they be paying attention to the road while they are driving?

Exactly.

I had to laugh at the plug for the Muth signal mirrors (flashing arrows on side mirrors) on the linked page. Here in Knoxville maybe 10% of cars bother with signals at all.

Agreed on the lack of signaling by many drivers. Still, I think the mirror signal feature would occassionally be helpful for those who do actually signal, especially for lane changes. If a driver in the lane you want to merge into is too far forward to see your tail light signal, they may still be able to see the mirror signal. Most drivers seeing this will either speed up or slow down, not wanting to hang next to someone they know is planning on merging over. Mirror signals could even come in handy for alerting cyclists who like to split lanes or pass on the right at intersections.

Of course it was humor by hyperbole. While I have experienced the occasional courteous light truck driver, thus further admitting that my prior joke was false, by and large the most aggressive, unsafe, dangerous and self-centered motorists that I have encountered are driving some sort of light truck (pick-up or SUV). When I am told to, "Get the (expletive deleted) off the road!" it is almost always yelled from a light truck. I have also observed, with some sadness, that motor vehicles with bikes attached to them or "share the road" license plates or stickers tend to also be driven with a fair measure of idiocy. That said, I think any fair assessment of cyclists would determine that most of us break the law on a regular basis as well, we just don't have the kinetic energy to do much killing. By the way, I'll grant you the BMW (or, as my wife calls them, bum w's) drivers are among the worst, but I have not had much problem with the Mercedes or Porsche drivers.

Before you buy that SUV please consider what the U.S. military said in a report they put out this May (echoed by the German military a few months later). They predict the end of cheap oil sometime between 2012 and 2015. When oil is $500/barrel and rising, maybe we will truly have an idiot in every SUV. Hopefully you will find this info both more helpful and more interesting than my prior comment.

Guilty as charged. Here is my 2005 ZR2 Chevy Blazer.

http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/s...2rightrear.jpg


I bought this vehicle new nearly 6 years ago. Since I like to pedal to work, it only has 19,XXX miles on it. I chose this because I really like the look of the 2 door body, with 4 wheel drive for our Illinois winters, and enough space in the enclosed back for our dog, carrying stuff, or even to sleep.

I always practice safe driving techniques and follow all traffic laws, including the speed limit. It has been almost 30 years since I've been involved in a crash or received a citation of any sort while driving. I have nothing but patience and courtesy for even the most scofflaw and/or ninja of cyclists when behind the wheel.

As a cyclist and motorist, I am still unable to determine a specific group of vehicle operators as being worse than any other. I encounter good and bad in every vehicle type, even bikes. Non-idiot SUV driver checking out.

"Or you can think of it as a right of passage."

Your "right" is WRONG. You mean, of course "rite" of passage. Sorry, couldn't resist a bad pun.

RANT within a RANT!


"Non-idiot SUV driver checking out. "


I won't say that such a person DOESN'T exist, but they're RARE. SUV's are heavier than station wagons and thus do more damage to the roads. They waste precious gallons of
unrenewable petroleum.( How many times have I seen a 9-seat behemoth chugging down the road to take Joe Pussgut [alone] over to the liquor store.) SUVS are supposed to be "safe". But ONLY to those inside. To regular-sized vehicles they pose a danger. SUVers glory in the view of the road they have from their high perch. Which is gained at the expense of normal height vehicles which can't see over or around them. SUV's are NOT cars. They are TRUCKS which have been given car style comfort (A/C, Power Steering/powerbrakes, carpeting ect) in order to get around CAFE* fuel economy figures which are considerably relaxed on trucks. Many folks buy them for that "Century Blizard" that never happens. I went thru a century Blizzard in '96. I couldn't drive for 24 hrs! END OF THE WORLD!!!( I starved to death and froze to death too. Also, the 4 wheel drive is NO aid to stoping on ice. It merely makes many SUV owners overconfidant in the ability of the vehicle to counter the negative effects of the weather. (Often resulting in rolling the thing over due to its top heaviness!)

Unless you have a specific reason for owning an SUV: hauling a trailer/boat, drive on a beach, or live in the boonies far from paved roads, the SUV is NOT a smart choice. For the environment, the road or YOUR POCKETBOOK!



* CAFE Corperate Average Fuel Economy. Which allows detroit to inflate the gas mileage by classing the SUVs as trucks, not cars, which must get better mileage.

Driving eventually turns most people into self-centered idiots. SUVs do this plus add less visibility, increased chance of rollover, less ability to stop quickly, more isolation from the world, and they increase the chances of killing someone in another vehicle in an accident by many times. In short, unless you have a specific need for an SUV, buying one generally shows that you really don't give a s*** for anyone but yourself and your image.

Conveniently, so does cycling.

I do, of course. :-)

I hope to be able to find a reasonable vehicle when it comes time to replace our current hauler - an 8 passenger, AWD van which averages about 15 MPG... so not exactly a winner based on the standards of the day. The issue is the need to, on a regular basis, transport 7 or more people, plus their stuff, and the desire to be able to do so through snow, sand and other less-than-ideal surfaces. The bulk of the 7 passenger and larger vehicles are SUVs, and only one non-SUV option is presently available with 4WD or AWD (the Toyota Sienna). Of course, minivans share most of the same problems as the SUVs which began this rant -- esp. now that most SUVs are based on minivan chassis. I was impressed this weekend, though, at the mileage achieved by the rented Dodge Grand Caravan I drove -- 21.3MPG overall for 750-800 miles, and I achieved over 25 from the final fill up to the airport to turn it in (about 7 miles). We will definitely be looking for economical options when the time comes, but for the most part we will expect to offset our expensive hauler with the Prius we own, and my bike :-)

Actually, we'll all self-centered idiots inherently. It just tends to manifest itself most profoundly when our perceived rights are infringed upon (deliberately or not) by someone else.

I too am guilty as charged. Except my SUV is a tad larger overall.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_-LMhKLdJ-qQ/Rq.../03Yukon-2.jpg

I tow trailers. A lot. I put 30k miles on the Yukon last year alone with about 75% of those having another vehicle in tow behind it on an open trailer (Boat or another car). Of those trips with the trailer I can only think of a handful that I made without at least one other person, and often with 3 or more additional people in the car with me. There are VERY few vehicles that can safely carry more than 5 people, and tow over 5,000 lbs at the same time. So, please don't lump me in with the "lifestyle" SUV driver. Some of us actually use the vehicle for it's intended purpose.

With that said, I think AlmostTrick hit the nail on the head. You can't assume all drivers of one particular vehicle are idiots. Furthermore whomever made the comment that every SUV has an idiot in it is simply showing his ignorance. There are a lot of us that need/want the utility that these vehicles provide, yet are not completely brain dead behind the wheel.

I owned two Miatas, a 1995 and a 2009. Great cars. Plus they come with two free OB/GYN appts and a life time supply of Midol.

I hope this is a typo.

Yea.....I'm fixing it now.

DOH!

Fyi - my anti-malware program fired off when I went to this URL

What I want to know is, why does it seem that drivers need to be doing something other than driving? What has happened to the attention span of most people?

Thanks for the heads-up.

I just tried with IE and Firefox and no alerts. Never heard of that before. Vimeo is not heavy on the advertising like YouTube but some ad could have triggered your malware.

Don't you know? Being able to "multi-task" is a sign of superiority.

My problem is that anything important enough to try to do while driving demands more attention than I can give it while I'm in the car. Heck, even when parked I tend to keep the phone calls short (and I use a Bluetooth speakerphone with voice dial) because I'm just not comfortable chatting with disembodied voices while sealed into a metal box. Pretty much everybody who calls me knows by now that they need to plan what they're going to say before they dial, because I will hang up on them if they start dragging out the conversation while I'm driving. (What's up with people calling and not having a clue what they need to say, anyway? I get a lot of calls at work that start out with, "Uh...hi...uh...this is _____ with _____...um...I was...um...")

I recently read a study that showed that "multitaskers" are deluding themselves if they believe they can efficiently perform more than one task simultaneously. The study found that almost always, both jobs are performed with much less accuracy and precision than when each activity was done alone. Ever wonder WHY there is so MUCH incompetance in the world? This is a BIG reason. Ironically, those who multitask believe that they can do it effectively. A review of their performance on multi-tasked activities was a huge suprise to these individuals when they saw how poor the results were.

It took a long time for my wife to realize this. She had a habit of reading the paper and watching tv at the same time. She only realized how badly she was comprehending when I started refusing to explain what was happening on a show, and started quizing her on current events.

My wife gets cranky with me when I'm driving us somewhere in somewhat heavy traffic on unfamiliar roads and I stop talking to her or start giving her 'terse' answers. I tell her that I need to pay attention when I'm driving so that I don't get in a car accident, and then she'll often say something thinly guised as humour such as 'driving is hard'. At which point I will often point out that she has been in three bad car accidents, two of which resulted in more than one car having to be written off- and that I've got a spotless driving record (not strictly true, I was in one car accident- but I was t-boned by an idiot running a red light cause she was talking on a cell phone, so that wasn't my fault). The conversation usually breaks down at that point, cause she'll claim she was just 'teasing' me and I over reacted (and I probably did, and she might've been, but she was also trying to make a snarky comment and get away with it), at which point I just completely ignore until the traffic relaxes, I figure out where I am, or we arrive at our destination. Either way- my point was- even when I have a passenger who can see the road conditions, she doesn't always recognize that the road situation is getting (or is about to become) complicated and I need my full attention.