Do SUVs Make You Stupid?
Pointless, dangerous and vain as ever, land tanks still sell millions. Only one explanation possible

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, January 7, 2005

Maybe stupid is too strong a word.

Maybe it's more like willful ignorance. More like intentional blindness. More like a calm and conscious denial in the face of a staggering stack of overwhelming facts that if you looked at for even one minute would prove that land tanks are some of the most overrated and silly and harmful and utterly pointless vehicles on the planet.

OK, maybe stupid is the right word.

Because there really is no other explanation for the still-roaring success of the land tank. Still no other explanation for their bizarre popularity, for the fact that, according to the Census Bureau and despite California's legendary rep for organics and environmentalism and concerns of health and body and air, our fine and heavily Schwarzeneggered state leads the nation in new registrations for SUVs.

Sad but true. Registrations for the huge lumps of bulbous steel jumped 39 percent between 1997 and 2002, from 1.9 million to 2.75 million, and overall there's been a whopping 56 percent jump in sales of the beasts in a mere eight years across the country, totaling nearly 25 million of the ugly tanks now lumbering across the American landscape and hogging all the parking and burning up most of the oil and sneering in the face of air quality and all rational thought and flipping over and bursting into flame after hitting a pinecone at 80 mph.

You can see it in the eyes of most every new SUV buyer as they stare, wide eyed and overwhelmed, at the massive vehicles in the showroom: some sort of veil drops over their eyes, some sort of weird opiate pumps into their brains and they lose all sense of reason or common sense or environmental concern and their ego balloons and their testosterone kicks up three notches and they go into some sort of spasm of denial about how purchasing one of these things will, in fact, contribute quite heartily to the overall ill health of their own bodies and the planet as a whole, not to mention the very reason we are so desperately, violently at war.

And the salesman sees that look and just smiles and licks his chops and points out how this 4-ton hunk of environmental devastation can seat nine and tow a large tractor or maybe 15 head of cattle, plus it has 27 cup holders and three DVD players and a built-in sense of false superiority, and the vaguely depressed regularly emasculated suburban dad or the gum-snapping Marina girl with way too much of her parents' money and way too little self-defined taste takes one look and goes, oooh.

What, too harsh? Not really. Most people know these facts to be true, but buy the tanks anyway in a mad collusion of wishful thinking and raw denial and false advertising, absolutely convinced the beasts are somehow safer and sturdier (they're neither) and that they absolutely must have 37 cubic feet of cargo space to haul their grocery bags and 4-wheel-drive traction to get over those little concrete barriers in the mall parking lot and just ignore the fact that the thing rides like a brick and handles like a block of lead and is about as attractive and beautifully designed as a jar of rocks.

Irony? The SUV drips with it. Fact is, most Americans consider themselves environmentally conscious and claim to care deeply about protecting natural resources and don't really want war and suffering or the insane BushCo-brand oil dependence that causes both.

But the truth is, if Americans really cared about energy and pollution and reducing reliance on foreign oil and getting us out from under the massive hypocritical terrorist-supportin' Saudi thumb, they'd buy smaller or more efficient vehicles. Period. But they don't.

Waiting for that hybrid SUV to make it all better? Good for you. Step in the right direction, truly, though of course improved gas mileage and reduced emissions do nothing to allay the fact that SUVs still roll and still can't maneuver to avoid accidents and still hog parking and still assault the eye and tread as lightly on the planet as Arnold Schwarzenegger in ski boots. But hey. It's a start.

Another big fallacy? SUV roominess. Hell, ugly ol' minivans have far more storage and headroom, as do most sport wagons, PT Cruisers -- even large hatchbacks have more than enough overall storage (and often better headroom) for any but the largest of families and oh my God even this is a moot point because you well know that 97 percent of all SUVs on the road are single occupant and the only "cargo" is their purse or their gym bag, while the other 36 square feet is taken up by, well, ego and attitude and air.

Machismo? Well, yes. There's that. Big feeling of invincibility in an SUV, of a high and mighty driving position that gives you that commanding sensation, so strong and so powerful that you are willing to overlook that it's just an illusion, deceptive and harmful given how SUVs actually have more accidents, actually cause more accidents than passenger cars because they can't maneuver in emergency situations and can't stop in rain or snow and tend to flip over easier than Paris Hilton after a dozen Bacardi shooters.

And then you hear that, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, minivans are 10 times safer than SUVs in a crash. Whoops.

Truth is, small, nimble passenger cars may not survive a head-on collision with a Freightliner quite as well as your bigass Navigator, dude, but they do a hell of a lot better avoiding it in the first place. Which is why rates of serious accidents and incidents of death are actually lower for smaller cars than almost any lurching monster truck on the road. Period.

And sure you can be cheered slightly at the news that SUV sales are slightly sluggish lately, down 2 percent, and that Hummer sales are way off and Prius sales are way up and there's still a three-month waiting list for Mini Coopers.

Until you realize that 2 percent ain't much of nuthin' and until you read how the U.S. consumes 20 million barrels of oil each day, with passenger vehicles burning up three quarters of the total -- and SUVs alone burn half the total for all passenger cars, far more than their fair share and more petroleum than our entire country produces in a year.

And then you learn how that little pip-squeak tyrant Saddam was sitting on 10 percent of the world's oil reserves and that he might have once thought about threatening the nearby 60 percent owned by our buddies the terrorist-lovin', women-slappin' Saudis, and you realize that anyone who thinks we're in Iraq for democracy or humanity's sake is absolutely full of Rumsfeld.

Look. I know many people who own SUVs. Good people. Lovely people. Friends. Family. I know their arguments for owning them. I know that they know, deep down, that most of those arguments hold little sway and most are rather hollow and the result of slick marketing and just a little bit of fear.

And I know there is no accounting for taste and that a big part of the sad American ideology is a willful separation of cause and effect, a general ignorance of how our choices affect the world, and that there are worse atrocities in the world than owning a shiny black knobby-tired 5-ton Ford Expedition that never sees anything more rugged than a pothole in the Krispy Kreme drive-thru.

But, really, we have to just admit it: the SUV is hypocrisy incarnate. It is the perfect emblem for the American view, for our position in the world: gluttonous, vain, dangerous to almost everyone else on the road, mostly useless (over 85 percent of SUVs never see a dirt road, much less need 4-wheel drive), ugly as hell and as graceful or practical as a school bus on an ice-skating rink.

Just admit it. Maybe it will help. Maybe a tiny confession of guilt will put us back on the right track. After all, admission of the problem is the first step toward recovery, right? That, and placing your order now for the badass new VW GTI.


©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

In 2001 the average MPG of all new models sold actually went up for the first time since 81. 20 years of putting new cars on the street that got better MPG that the previous year erased by the SUV craze.

How much more fuel efficient can a mini-van be? They're about the same size, aren't they?

I'm surprised by how well Hummers seem to be selling. Why yhe fuck would you want that gigantic, wasteful eye-sore for a vehicle?

I pray for the day when a giant hand emerges from the sky and plucks each and ever SUV off the road, crushing it in it's huge palm like a paper ball.

"...flipping over and bursting into flame after hitting a pinecone at 80 mph. "

Or a mattress...

Thanks for posting that.

fp

You don't want to do a 20-mile commute on a Wisconsin highway in the winter without 4WD. Especially with your child in the car.

Exactly. Or Michigan.

Yeah, but you don't get it. They are ugly, overrated and silly, you see.

This guy is about as thought provoking as a fourth grader. First off all, if the SUV is what makes you stupid, then presumably you would be smart enough to not buy one in the first place. It's funny that he blasts the American neglect of cause and effect, yet he doesn't quite have the concept down.

I went back and checked out some of his previous output, and the sad part is that this is one of his better pieces. What a waste. This guy is like Bizarro Hannity. I may be wrong, but I think his stats are dubious, especially since there is little attempt to provide sources. Energy Information Administration puts motor gasoline consumption at 45% of the total oil consumption. This still seems like a problematic percentatge at 9 million barrels a day, but it's no where near the 80% figure Morford throws out.

i find that any car with front wheel drive is just as forgiving for the driver as an suv with 4wd. quite frankly, 4wd is overrated. if you know how to drive, you should be fine without it.

I'd also bet that more accidents in bad weather or sunny skies, involving SUVs or SUV absent also involve someone driving too fast.

It's an effect, not a cause. Stupid people buy them. They crash in the snow because stupid people don't understand physics, specifically Newton's First Law. This leads to a wonderfully effective lesson in Newton's Second Law.

I wish to no end that SUV's were considered to be trucks. Require a CDL, tax the bejeezus out of 'em. They weigh more than cars, they obstruct the vision of other drivers like trucks, they damage road surface more than cars.

Good post.

This is a serious issue, I think. It's my biggest complaint about SUVs, and I have many.

It's Bizarro Billzebub, the Regulator.

Now, go back your tinfoil hat back on, Merlin! I want to hear some more Randian praise of the natural law and free market!

Come on, do it. Do it, do it, do it!

my wife and i and our two 70+ lb. dogs like to go camping most weekends in the summer up in the mountains along rutted out old fire roads that require some decent clearance. we are supposed to do this with a minivan?
while i agree that 90% of SUV owners probably never leave the pavement, let's not condemn all owners.

Insofar as roads are a public good (This is not the place to debate the privatization of roadways), much as air/water, SUV's can be seen as a pollutant. There are numerous free-market based solutions to pollution, permits that favor efficient polluters (i.e. make it more costly to pollute). My original post would impose a similar market-based system. You want to drive one of these monstrosities? Fine, but it will cost you more because you are imposing additional costs/inconveniences on the rest of us. Also, the operating properties on this vehicle are different enough from cars that it is not unreasonable to require more stringent requirements, in the form of licensing and operating restrictions, on the operator. I don't believe anyone with a drivers license should be able to go out and buy and fly on their own an airplane, ditto the SUV. There is a specialty license required for motorcylces, why not for these beasties?

I'd also love to see them banned from the left hand lane, a la trucks, and prohibited from car-only parkways.

where does my Toyota Tacoma fit into the picture. I mean, I suppose it is suv/pick-up/mid-size car. Its no expedition by any means, but it is also not a vw golf.

I have this friend whose blood boils every time he sees a large suv. He and I went shopping for our families at xmas time and we must have seen 3 Hummers, 4 Expeditions, and a handful of others. Everytime we walked past them he'd mutter under his breath, "nice [enter name of suv here] ASShole". It was absolutely hilarious.

The Hummer's I noticed are ridiculous. In Norfolk Virginia I was and we were downtown. There was all this parking on Granby street that is parallel parking and what not. The Hummer was all the way up to the curb and must have been sticking out 2 feet over the other side of the painted parking lines. Cars travelling in opposite directions had to wait for one or the other to pass before moving along.

It was blocking traffic.

However, 4wd is not overrated in the least. For those of you who say otherwise, have you attempted to travel on a daily basis, out of necessity, to work or school in feet of snow? It's not as though people who are in this situation are barelling down the road at 60mph. Most people I notice in the midwest particularly are pretty safe drivers when it comes to bad weather. There are the exceptions of course. 4wd would benefit my truck for sure. It would offer me that much more stability for the rear of my truck in rain and such when there is nothing in the bed. I tend to fishtail, even in the rain.

Anyway, I just rambled. sorry.

I think these people are just trying to be prepared for the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max.

Jesus would probably drive one, because he's always giving lifts to one or two or more of those twelve hangers-on who are always hanging around with him. And their stuff.

I've heard that four-wheel drive just means 'more wheels to spin'.

Besides, you can get a four-wheel drive in a Subaru or a Suzuki. Albeit, if you need clearance, that's an entirely different deal.

Hey, I figure the gas mileage is its own punishment.

And you wouldn't wanna be trapped on a LA freeway behind one in traffic especially when you know the 4WD will never be used. Note the article, albiet a bad one, was written in CA. Why does CA need 4WD? We lead the nation in new SUV registrations, as pointed out in the article. Why? Especially when some of those SUV's have owners manuals that say "never use 4wd on paved roads". I found very interesting that after the SUV boom here in CA I went back to Ohio & expected the same & barely saw any SUV's. Just seemed to make more sense there'd be more of a need back there.

Maybe SUVs are cheaper in CA, so people buy them there in order to use them in a snowy place.

I wonder how convertables sell in Alaska.

i like mine - i make no excuses. it gets the same mileage as most large sedans or pick ups. it has 4 wheel drive to get up skiing easily and drive on a lot of really bad forest service roads, plus it can haul a lot of crap around, plus haul a boat.

people search and search for things to condemn to make them feel better about themselves.

I don't think that is true. At least not about SUVs.

I'd say it's true of assholes, but I don't think ripping SUVs qualifies.

I'd agree with rodney's statement if he was talking about Fox News people that are hopping on this train of condemning Muslim royalty for excess and luxury while forgetting about all the corporate greed and waste over here.

SUV sales have gotten completely out of hand and that's not because people who actually use them out of necessity have increased, it's because upper middle class status seeking scum buy them like seniors buy meds, and that kind of excess should be halted.

During other, serious wars we had to make sacrifices- giving up meat on certain days, slowing down our use of precious resources. In today's world we allow people to waste and waste what is one of the scarcest materials out there.