Posted 4/24/2005 04:31:00 PM by Douglas

While we're on the subject, here's a truly fascinating article about SUVs and the unapparent safety trade-off of those that drive them. It's long, but worth the read. Highlights:

But that's the puzzle of what has happened to the automobile world: feeling safe has become more important than actually being safe.

The truth, underneath all the rationalizations, seemed to be that S.U.V. buyers thought of big, heavy vehicles as safe: they found comfort in being surrounded by so much rubber and steel. To the engineers, of course, that didn't make any sense, either: if consumers really wanted something that was big and heavy and comforting, they ought to buy minivans, since minivans, with their unit-body construction, do much better in accidents than S.U.V.s.

Well, duh. Not even considering the percentage of drivers that haven't taken a basic physics class, but isn't kind obvious that it's going to take longer to stop a Suburban and it does a Civic?

Most of us think that S.U.V.s are much safer than sports cars. If you asked the young parents of America whether they would rather strap their infant child in the back seat of the TrailBlazer or the passenger seat of the Boxster, they would choose the TrailBlazer. We feel that way because in the TrailBlazer our chances of surviving a collision with a hypothetical tractor-trailer in the other lane are greater than they are in the Porsche. What we forget, though, is that in the TrailBlazer you're also much more likely to hit the tractor-trailer because you can't get out of the way in time. In the parlance of the automobile world, the TrailBlazer is better at "passive safety." The Boxster is better when it comes to "active safety," which is every bit as important.

"Learned Helplessness," which the article addresses, is a fascinating approach to looking at the boom in SUV sales, and it reinforces the notion in this country that it's much more important to appear to be solving the problem than it is to actually solve the problem. It doesn't matter if the Accord is actually safer for your children, if you don't put Katlin and Dakota in an SUV, you're not doing all you can to protect them. Even if that notion is 100% wrong. So who is buying the SUVs?

According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.

Ah yes, the core Volvo drivers. People that want to buy a "safe car" as a public apology for never having learned how do drive the damn thing in the first place. But what else does the SUV say about the person that drives it?

An S.U.V. embodies the opposite logic. The driver is seated as high and far from the road as possible. The vehicle is designed to overcome its environment, not to respond to it. Even four-wheel drive, seemingly the most beneficial feature of the S.U.V., serves to reinforce this isolation.

For years, we've all made fun of the middle-aged man who suddenly trades in his sedate family sedan for a shiny red sports car. That's called a midlife crisis. But at least it involves some degree of engagement with the act of driving. The man who gives up his sedate family sedan for an S.U.V. is saying something far more troubling--that he finds the demands of the road to be overwhelming. Is acting out really worse than giving up?

SUVs aren't evil. They're inanimate objects that are, the last time I checked, morally neutral. Aside from being the only cars produced today that you can fit comfortably in if you're more than one standard deviation away from the norm, there's just no point in them. if commuting in a 5,000 pound SUV when gas is over $2.00 a gallon isn't going to get people out of their SUVs, nothing will. It's yet another sad footnote to our society. I blame advertising.