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Darell said:
I would be right there with you if it weren't for the nagging safety issue of your vehicle of choice. The saftey both of your passengers, and of the others on the road.
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Every piece I've read on SUV safety has questionable (at best) statistics. Usually you see something like this:
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19.5 per cent of all fatal road crashes involved rollovers, and 35.2 per cent of SUV-related fatal crashes involved rollovers.
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That sounds damning at first, but when you think about it, it loses some of it's punch. Since we're not given any context for this statistic, the simplest explanation I could think of was that it shows that it takes a more severe crash to produce a fatality in an SUV than it does in a regular car. Doesn't that imply some safety value? I think the author was trying to imply that you're more likely to be injured if your SUV rolls over than if your car rolls over, but then the statistic we'd want to see is percent of rollovers involving a fatality, not the percent of fatalities involving a rollover.
Here's another one I like:
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Bradsher reports that four-fifths of those killed in roll-overs were not belted in, even though 75 percent of the general driving population now buckles up regularly.
[cite]
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We have some actual numbers here, but they don't actually show anything meaningful. First we have the statement that SUV drivers hate seatbelts. Fine, now we assume the numbers will back that statement up. Four-fifths (80%) of those killed in (presumably SUV) roll-overs were not wearing seatbelts. Great, now where are the numbers on regular automobile roll-overs? Instead of that, which would give you a meaningful comparision, we get the bait-and-switch: 75% of the general public buckles up! Gee, that's a great stat, but how many car drivers buckle up, and how many SUV drivers do so? No idea. Did the author of the book make this same mistake, or is it the reviewer's bad grasp of basic statistics? I'm not planning on wasting the money on the book to find out.
Inevitably, these SUV "expose" stories degenerate into anecdotal evidence and ad hominem.
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...the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be. [ibid.]
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SUV drivers generally don't care about anyone else's kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what's practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them. [ibid.]
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The argument that SUV drivers are "assholes" is really hilarious. Do people think these guys were nice people before they bought their first SUV? I've got news for you - there are lots of assholes driving regular cars, too! I guess they're just "future SUV drivers." :|
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...automakers have, over the past decade, ramped up their SUV designs to appeal even more to the "reptilian" instincts of the many Americans who are attracted to SUVs not because of their perceived safety, but for their obvious aggressiveness. [ibid.]
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So the aesthetics are damaging the environment? Or causing more deaths? Uh, what's the problem here? Marketing guys giving people what they want?
