SUV: Terror on the Suburban Frontier
Driving down the back roads of suburban Maryland is very different from trailblazing down the vast frontier of the Colorado Rockies. When I leave my middle class cul-de-sac to head to class in my blue ’95 Ford Taurus, I never feel like I’m out on a great migration down the Oregon Trail. Yet this seems to be the case for many American drivers. Every day they pile into their gas-guzzling behemoths that bear titles like Explorer, Expedition, Frontier, Rodeo, and Trailblazer, and head out onto self indulgent expeditions across the epic frontier of the suburban wilderness. The great landscape of the local Shopper’s Food Warehouse parking lot is dotted with these great land bound leviathans, which take up two and three parking spaces. Are the drivers loading up at the local supermarket for a trip west? Does the American consumer really need to have a vehicle that can withstand the rigors of life on the great frontier? The simple answer is no. Further more however, these mechanical monsters known commonly as SUVs are truly a hazard to the environment, the suburban frontiersmen who drive them, and the poor shmucks that attempt to coexist on the same highway as them. SUVs should be removed from the urban frontier and be replaced with cars that are better suited for this environment.
It’s not hard for me to see them when I commute daily. Nearly three times the size of my four door commuter car, the SUV seems to be made for the great outdoors. Why then is it on the roads of downtown Annapolis? I see no mountains; no unpaved wild trails waiting to be tamed. I see no wagon train headed west across the Great Plains. I see an obese, middle aged mother in a Bowie High School Bulldogs sweatshirt, taming the street at excessive speeds with a large soccer ball sticker emblazoned on the back of her silver Chevy Tahoe. Is this woman on a great quest to reach the Appalachian mountains to stake a claim for herself and her family in the new world? No. This suburban trailblazer is late for her son’s soccer game and will be damned if she’s going to let some poke head in a little Ford Taurus make her drive under 60 miles per hour. Since 1999 Sport utility vehicles have “captured the overall market share lead among female new vehicle buyers. Women shopping for a new car or truck now favor SUVs over any other type of vehicle.” (Polk www) Furthermore, “52.2% of all new vehicle purchases are made by women. 75% of all those who purchase SUVs, never use them for any sort of off-road driving or driving in a hazardous environment”(Bradsher 23). These are not cowboys driving these monsters across the tundra; these are middle aged mothers driving their kids to soccer practice.
People who drive SUVs do so because they claim that the SUV is safer on the road. SUVs are frequently marketed as much safer than other cars. Government studies however have found that “the occupant death rate for mid-sized SUVs is 6 percent higher than cars”. For large SUVs, “the death rate is 8 percent higher than minivans and mid-sized cars” like my Ford Taurus (SUV.org). Since SUVs ride higher off the ground and have a higher center of gravity, their rollover rate is “three times worse than for cars.” Also, current government safety standards do not require SUVs to have reinforced roofs, which would help protect occupants in case of a rollover. So if the hurried soccer mom mentioned earlier were to turn too fast while driving her 200 ton Chevy Juggernaut she could very easily lose control and rollover. SUV rollovers account for about 1,000 deaths each year. Given that SUVs are built with stiff, heavily-armored frames designed for the great frontier or the war in Iraq, they are more likely to kill other drivers in an accident. Department of Transportation scientists study the “kill rate” or “how many other people certain vehicle models are responsible for killing each year in crashes” and when studying SUVs, these scientists came to a frightening conclusion: “For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. In one specific instance, they found that the SUV Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road. In comparison, the Honda Accord kills 21 people” ( NHTSA). So now if the rushed renegade in the Chevy Obliterator rolls her car over or hits my poor four-door commuter-mobile, there is a higher chance of either her or I being issued a toe tag then if she were to drive little Skippy to soccer in a normal sized car.
Albeit easy for an American driver to get sucked into the great myth of the new American frontier, it is impossible to overlook the economic and environmental draw backs of driving an SUV. With current gas prices sky rocketing to epic new heights the SUV driver easily shells out $40 dollars to fill their Ford and Chevy Battle-cruisers. According to the manufacturers website The HUMMER H2 sports a svelte 32 gallon gas tank. This little thing fills for a whopping $72.32 at the current price of regular gas (2.26 at my local Exxon). The H2’s gas mileage tops off at about 13 miles per gallon in the city. Many get down to as low as 8mpg. That means that the H2 burns through its 72 dollars worth of gas in about 256 miles. So for me to commute to UMBC everyday in an H2 I would need to fill up after 5 trips to and from school. This egregious amount of gas that this gluttonous gargantuan guzzles is burned off and released in the form of harmful chemicals that are damaging to the environment. So not only is the overweight sports fan in the SUV killing me in a crash, she is also killing the environment just by driving. In the D.C. metropolitan area, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently declared the area’s ozone levels “severe,” after a summer with the worst ozone pollution in a decade. Last year, “an official with the Maryland Department of Transportation publicly blamed the explosive growth in SUV sales as the main reason pollution in the region dramatically increased” (SUV.org).
Not only are they unsafe but they are also bad for the environment and the economy. If the great American driver really wished to drive safely they could easily pick a safe commuter car. If the Freudian frontiersmen could escape the bigger is better ideal that Americans tend to subscribe to the environment would be better off and the roadways would be safer. The SUV is truly turning the highway into a dangerous frontier where everyday I take my life in my hands fearful of some out-of-control driver behind the wheel of Sport Utility Vehicle. These vehicles are made for the tundra and not for the suburbs. Perhaps a little restraint is in order.
It’s not hard for me to see them when I commute daily. Nearly three times the size of my four door commuter car, the SUV seems to be made for the great outdoors. Why then is it on the roads of downtown Annapolis? I see no mountains; no unpaved wild trails waiting to be tamed. I see no wagon train headed west across the Great Plains. I see an obese, middle aged mother in a Bowie High School Bulldogs sweatshirt, taming the street at excessive speeds with a large soccer ball sticker emblazoned on the back of her silver Chevy Tahoe. Is this woman on a great quest to reach the Appalachian mountains to stake a claim for herself and her family in the new world? No. This suburban trailblazer is late for her son’s soccer game and will be damned if she’s going to let some poke head in a little Ford Taurus make her drive under 60 miles per hour. Since 1999 Sport utility vehicles have “captured the overall market share lead among female new vehicle buyers. Women shopping for a new car or truck now favor SUVs over any other type of vehicle.” (Polk www) Furthermore, “52.2% of all new vehicle purchases are made by women. 75% of all those who purchase SUVs, never use them for any sort of off-road driving or driving in a hazardous environment”(Bradsher 23). These are not cowboys driving these monsters across the tundra; these are middle aged mothers driving their kids to soccer practice.
People who drive SUVs do so because they claim that the SUV is safer on the road. SUVs are frequently marketed as much safer than other cars. Government studies however have found that “the occupant death rate for mid-sized SUVs is 6 percent higher than cars”. For large SUVs, “the death rate is 8 percent higher than minivans and mid-sized cars” like my Ford Taurus (SUV.org). Since SUVs ride higher off the ground and have a higher center of gravity, their rollover rate is “three times worse than for cars.” Also, current government safety standards do not require SUVs to have reinforced roofs, which would help protect occupants in case of a rollover. So if the hurried soccer mom mentioned earlier were to turn too fast while driving her 200 ton Chevy Juggernaut she could very easily lose control and rollover. SUV rollovers account for about 1,000 deaths each year. Given that SUVs are built with stiff, heavily-armored frames designed for the great frontier or the war in Iraq, they are more likely to kill other drivers in an accident. Department of Transportation scientists study the “kill rate” or “how many other people certain vehicle models are responsible for killing each year in crashes” and when studying SUVs, these scientists came to a frightening conclusion: “For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. In one specific instance, they found that the SUV Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road. In comparison, the Honda Accord kills 21 people” ( NHTSA). So now if the rushed renegade in the Chevy Obliterator rolls her car over or hits my poor four-door commuter-mobile, there is a higher chance of either her or I being issued a toe tag then if she were to drive little Skippy to soccer in a normal sized car.
Albeit easy for an American driver to get sucked into the great myth of the new American frontier, it is impossible to overlook the economic and environmental draw backs of driving an SUV. With current gas prices sky rocketing to epic new heights the SUV driver easily shells out $40 dollars to fill their Ford and Chevy Battle-cruisers. According to the manufacturers website The HUMMER H2 sports a svelte 32 gallon gas tank. This little thing fills for a whopping $72.32 at the current price of regular gas (2.26 at my local Exxon). The H2’s gas mileage tops off at about 13 miles per gallon in the city. Many get down to as low as 8mpg. That means that the H2 burns through its 72 dollars worth of gas in about 256 miles. So for me to commute to UMBC everyday in an H2 I would need to fill up after 5 trips to and from school. This egregious amount of gas that this gluttonous gargantuan guzzles is burned off and released in the form of harmful chemicals that are damaging to the environment. So not only is the overweight sports fan in the SUV killing me in a crash, she is also killing the environment just by driving. In the D.C. metropolitan area, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently declared the area’s ozone levels “severe,” after a summer with the worst ozone pollution in a decade. Last year, “an official with the Maryland Department of Transportation publicly blamed the explosive growth in SUV sales as the main reason pollution in the region dramatically increased” (SUV.org).
Not only are they unsafe but they are also bad for the environment and the economy. If the great American driver really wished to drive safely they could easily pick a safe commuter car. If the Freudian frontiersmen could escape the bigger is better ideal that Americans tend to subscribe to the environment would be better off and the roadways would be safer. The SUV is truly turning the highway into a dangerous frontier where everyday I take my life in my hands fearful of some out-of-control driver behind the wheel of Sport Utility Vehicle. These vehicles are made for the tundra and not for the suburbs. Perhaps a little restraint is in order.