Ah, the American Dream. It used to be owning a Volvo or BMW. Nowadays, size does matter. Kevin Drum over at Calpundit has a post about monster SUV's. He notes that Gregg Easterbrook at The New Republic writes:
The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty does not speculate much about why SUVs and pickup trucks crash so much more frequently than regular cars, but the guesses are obvious. First, SUVs and pickups are styled to look cinematically menacing, and thus bring out the worst in drivers, visually egging them on to be hostile and aggressive. Second, owners of SUVs, especially, may falsely believe their vehicles have superior handling or road-holding power. Actually SUVs as a group are less stable than regular cars--as evidenced by roll-overs--because their high centers of gravity more than wipe out any benefits that four-wheel drive may confer. Finally, those sitting at the wheels of SUVs and pickup trucks may drive like lunatics, yakking into the cell phone all the while, because they themselves have fallen for the propaganda about SUVs being safer than regular cars.
You can read the rest of the column here. The funniest thing about this is how naive SUV drivers are to the facts. Most people I know who own large SUV's falsely believe that they are safer. There are two key points about these large vehicles that I think are central to the problem. First, most people would need an extra job just to pay for the gas. Usually, rich people are buying these "cars." Our over-reliance on Middle Eastern oil is ratcheted up because of the 9 miles a gallon that SUV's get. Secondly, what gives that lady in the Excursion next to me the right to blab on the phone and drive at the same time? Most city roads, or for that matter country roads, were not designed for such large vehicles. Look at Europe. They know they have small streets. So they go out and build the Mini.
Our highways are getting more crowded by the day. Second-tier access Interstates that were built to help urban sprawlers are now getting a bit too crowded themselves. The answer to these problems is to not build bigger and bigger just so people can feel safer on the packed roads of America. Personally, I can't wait for Air Cars. And skyways just like in Back To The Future 2.