August 31, 2005
Got gas?
Gas prices keep going up.
Looks like they may top $3/gallon by this weekend.
If that means that less over-sized SUVs with piss-poor gas mileage will be sold, I am ALL FOR IT.
If that means the people driving these gas-guzzling death traps are going to stay home more often, I hope gas prices rise to $5/gallon. Whatever price it takes for them not to be able to afford to drive them.
In Britain, the average vehicle gets 26 MPG and is much smaller than most cars driven by americans. Large SUVs are frowned upon.
In the US, the average vehicle gets 17 MPG. You see people driving things like Lincoln Navigators – dangerous to their own drivers and more importantly, to others on the road.
So if $5 gas will keep them off the road, I will gladly accept it.
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Nice opinion piece Wilson. However, how do you expect families: 2 adults, 2-3 children some in car seats and a dog to travel anywhere (safely) in anything but an SUV? In the old days you could pile 4 kids in the back of a station wagon and all was well, not today.
Maybe you’ll suggest a mini-van… In New England that is pretty ridiculous since I have needed 4WD and the ground clearance of my SUV just to get out of my driveway during the winter months.
Gas prices are not going to stop people from buying SUVs. Never has and never will. Taxes and penalties don’t stop it either (see California) so give up and share the road.
“In the old days you could pile 4 kids in the back of a station wagon and all was well, not today.”
Why not today?
And why should I be at risk because of other vehicles?
From SUV.org:
While SUVs pose serious safety problems for their occupants, recent studies are showing that SUVs are greatly increasing the danger on our roads for drivers and passengers in other cars. Federal information shows that although light trucks account for one-third of all registered vehicles, traffic crashes between a light truck and any other vehicle now account for the majority of fatalities in vehicle-to-vehicle collisions. Of the 5,259 fatalities caused when light trucks struck cars in 1996, 81 percent of the fatally injured were occupants of the car.(9) In multiple-vehicle crashes, the occupants of the car are four times more likely to be killed than the occupants of the SUV.(10) In a side-impact collision with an SUV, car occupants are 27 times more likely to die.(11)
As far as “gas prices are not going to stop people from buying SUVs”…
I disagree. Notice all the ads lately promoting car lines that get “more than 25 MPG”?
Somehow, families managed prior to giant SUVs.
Because there aren’t enough seat belts for 4 people in the back of a station wagon. Especially those old rear-facing drop gate kinds like you used to drive around in.
As far as your quote – for every quote you can find on the internet I can find an opposite example:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA453.html
“Fasten your seatbelts for some politically incorrect news: You are most likely to survive a motor vehicle accident if the vehicle you are in is big.
Size and weight equals better occupant protection – it is basic physics – and a big reason for the ongoing popularity of SUVs. You (and your family) stand a much better chance of surviving a major crash in a 4,500-lb. mid-size SUV than in a 2,400-lb. subcompact, especially in a head-on collision.
Yet, ironically, it is SUVs that are increasingly being denounced as “unsafe” – typically by the same crowd that has been trying to force the public into smaller, less crashworthy cars for the past quarter century via government-mandated fuel economy standards.”
And you argument that an increase in Ads equals an increase in sales in unfounded.
http://www.aiada.org/ – International Auto Dealers Association:
“With 3526 units sold in July, the SUVs sales were up 41.5% for the month and 22.3%”