Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________THE BULLY ON THE BLOCK BY ROS DAVIDSON (12/08/97)

It is amusing to watch the self-righteous sniveling of sport utility vehicle owners, now that they are going to be required to pay a small fraction of the real costs of owning their urban assault vehicles. The rest of us subsidize SUV owners through taxes that discount the real cost of gas and the real cost of highway maintenance. SUVs are not subject to the same emissions controls as cars, so our lungs have to cough up to subsidize them as well. Removing the insurance subsidy is at least a start.
SUVs are not "safer"; they are statistically more liable to single-vehicle accidents, and the fatality rate for such accidents is higher for SUVs than for cars. They are only "safer" in as much as they are guaranteed to crush smaller vehicles in a multivehicle accident. Delightful. A fine statement of democratic values.
SUVs aren't even very useful. They carry fewer people and less cargo at a higher cost than other vehicles. If you want to move people, get a minivan; if you want to move stuff off-road, get a pickup; if you want a safe all-wheel drive, get a Subaru (for the price of a SUV, get two). If you want a rugged individualist image that only a SUV can give you ... get a life.
-- Doug Kretzmann

Thanks for Ros Davidson's excellent article/interview on sport utility vehicles. While driving an SUV hardly qualifies as an evil, doing so displays a provincial heedlessness toward the very serious problem of excessive C02 emissions. Anybody who's been awake during the past few weeks knows America emits far more C02 per person than any other nation on earth.
I'm not disturbed by the sight of an SUV on the highway, ferrying a family of four and their luggage on an interstate voyage that would otherwise be impossible, or at the very least uncomfortable. We've got a big country; we need to get around, and I suppose we've invested too much in our roads to replace them with railways that most people would bend over backwards not to use.
But this picture is disgusting: In the middle of rush hour, in the middle of the small Midwestern city where I live, two lanes of a dozen SUVs spewing exhaust at a red light, each SUV containing ONE person -- the driver -- cozy in his or her portable living room. A terrible waste of energy and space. And isn't smug self-indulgence already too closely associated with Americans without being prominently emblematized by our vehicles?
We can't, and shouldn't, get rid of SUVs. But we can stop being complacent, oil-guzzling, environmental isolationists and, in the spirit of Kyoto, take a serious, committed role in global environmental stewardship. We should demand higher fuel efficiency in ALL vehicles, especially SUVs, and put far more effort than we do into exploring alternative power sources. We've landed a rover on Mars; we're sequencing the human genome. Surely if we put enough pressure on our auto makers they can build an SUV than gets more than 17 miles per gallon or -- even better -- runs on a hydrogen cell. That pressure is, in the free market, the equivalent of directing your dollars elsewhere. If you buy and drive an SUV, you're saying to the problem of excessive C02 emissions, "I don't give a damn."
-- Stephen Lovely
Iowa City

If one lives in the country or does a lot of off-road recreation, naturally a sport utility vehicle is the best choice. They are rugged and built to withstand such uses. The only problem I've experienced with SUVs are with the drivers themselves.
I live in Albuquerque, N.M., and it was snowing lightly when my husband and I drove home last night. The roads were very icy. We made our way past a total of six accidents in the 15 miles we drove, and every one of them involved a pickup truck or an SUV. No passenger cars, so semi-trucks. In four of them, the vehicles spun into the divider; in the remaining two, other SUVs and/or trucks were involved. After having read the SUV article in Salon, I was glad to see no passenger cars were involved, as people might have been killed.
The problem with SUVs isn't who should pay the higher insurance premiums. It's who thinks they are safer on the road, gets a little cocky with their driving and ends up hitting something while the rest of us pass by slowly and safely.
Let's not play "the blame game" when it comes to who should pay the higher premiums. Let the accident statistics speak for themselves, and SUV and sports car owners will pay more than the rest of us as a result. When passenger cars are involved in more and worse accidents, I will be happy to pay my share. (Don't even get me started on folks who use their cell phones while they drive.)
-- Michelle Eytcheson
A happy Nissan driver
SALON | Dec. 15, 1997
Read more letters on the evils and benefits of sport utility vehicles.

R E C E N T L Y+| LET'S GET THIS STRAIGHT BY SCOTT ROSENBERG

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_______________THE BULLY ON THE BLOCK BY ROS DAVIDSON (12/08/97)
	It is amusing to watch the self-righteous sniveling of sport utility vehicle owners, now that they are going to be required to pay a small fraction of the real costs of owning their urban assault vehicles. The rest of us subsidize SUV owners through taxes that discount the real cost of gas and the real cost of highway maintenance. SUVs are not subject to the same emissions controls as cars, so our lungs have to cough up to subsidize them as well. Removing the insurance subsidy is at least a start. SUVs are not "safer"; they are statistically more liable to single-vehicle accidents, and the fatality rate for such accidents is higher for SUVs than for cars. They are only "safer" in as much as they are guaranteed to crush smaller vehicles in a multivehicle accident. Delightful. A fine statement of democratic values. SUVs aren't even very useful. They carry fewer people and less cargo at a higher cost than other vehicles. If you want to move people, get a minivan; if you want to move stuff off-road, get a pickup; if you want a safe all-wheel drive, get a Subaru (for the price of a SUV, get two). If you want a rugged individualist image that only a SUV can give you ... get a life. -- Doug Kretzmann Thanks for Ros Davidson's excellent article/interview on sport utility vehicles. While driving an SUV hardly qualifies as an evil, doing so displays a provincial heedlessness toward the very serious problem of excessive C02 emissions. Anybody who's been awake during the past few weeks knows America emits far more C02 per person than any other nation on earth. I'm not disturbed by the sight of an SUV on the highway, ferrying a family of four and their luggage on an interstate voyage that would otherwise be impossible, or at the very least uncomfortable. We've got a big country; we need to get around, and I suppose we've invested too much in our roads to replace them with railways that most people would bend over backwards not to use. But this picture is disgusting: In the middle of rush hour, in the middle of the small Midwestern city where I live, two lanes of a dozen SUVs spewing exhaust at a red light, each SUV containing ONE person -- the driver -- cozy in his or her portable living room. A terrible waste of energy and space. And isn't smug self-indulgence already too closely associated with Americans without being prominently emblematized by our vehicles? We can't, and shouldn't, get rid of SUVs. But we can stop being complacent, oil-guzzling, environmental isolationists and, in the spirit of Kyoto, take a serious, committed role in global environmental stewardship. We should demand higher fuel efficiency in ALL vehicles, especially SUVs, and put far more effort than we do into exploring alternative power sources. We've landed a rover on Mars; we're sequencing the human genome. Surely if we put enough pressure on our auto makers they can build an SUV than gets more than 17 miles per gallon or -- even better -- runs on a hydrogen cell. That pressure is, in the free market, the equivalent of directing your dollars elsewhere. If you buy and drive an SUV, you're saying to the problem of excessive C02 emissions, "I don't give a damn." -- Stephen Lovely Iowa City If one lives in the country or does a lot of off-road recreation, naturally a sport utility vehicle is the best choice. They are rugged and built to withstand such uses. The only problem I've experienced with SUVs are with the drivers themselves. I live in Albuquerque, N.M., and it was snowing lightly when my husband and I drove home last night. The roads were very icy. We made our way past a total of six accidents in the 15 miles we drove, and every one of them involved a pickup truck or an SUV. No passenger cars, so semi-trucks. In four of them, the vehicles spun into the divider; in the remaining two, other SUVs and/or trucks were involved. After having read the SUV article in Salon, I was glad to see no passenger cars were involved, as people might have been killed. The problem with SUVs isn't who should pay the higher insurance premiums. It's who thinks they are safer on the road, gets a little cocky with their driving and ends up hitting something while the rest of us pass by slowly and safely. Let's not play "the blame game" when it comes to who should pay the higher premiums. Let the accident statistics speak for themselves, and SUV and sports car owners will pay more than the rest of us as a result. When passenger cars are involved in more and worse accidents, I will be happy to pay my share. (Don't even get me started on folks who use their cell phones while they drive.) -- Michelle Eytcheson A happy Nissan driver SALON \| Dec. 15, 1997 Read more letters on the evils and benefits of sport utility vehicles.