STOP PICKING ON ME AND MY SUV!

If a car salesman offered you a deal on a car that is expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, guzzles gas, is unsafe, is damaged more easily in accidents, causes more pollution than other vehicles and will make the United States even more dependent upon foreign countries for energy, would you buy it?

I know I wouldn’t.

And yet, people are buying the car I just described, the SUV (sport utility vehicle), like crazy.  Why?

Maybe it’s because the car companies have convinced Americans that they not only want an SUV, they need one.  With SUVs being the single most profitable vehicle car manufacturers can make, why wouldn’t they try to get us to buy one?  SUVs make up 15% of car sales, but 60% of the car industry’s profits.  In other words, the car companies are taking us for a ride.

SUVs cost more to maintain than other cars because they’re more expensive to insure, they’re more expensive to register, financing and routine maintenance are higher and these gas eaters sometimes get under 10 miles to the gallon.  Owning an SUV over a period of five years could wind up costing you an extra $13,000, compared to an average vehicle.  I think I could find a few other ways to spend $13,000, thank you.

Even though people say that they feel “safer” in an SUV, statistics show that SUVs are more likely to tip over than an average car.  In fact, you are 2.3 times more likely to die in a rollover accident in an SUV than in an average car. 

Statistics also show that SUVs are a danger to others.  If an SUV hits a passenger car, the people in the passenger car are four times more likely to be killed.  Let’s say an SUV hits a VW Bug.  Who do you think would be more likely to survive the crash?  Wait a minute!  I own a VW Bug!

If you own an SUV, you won’t be getting the most comfortable ride of your life, either.  They still handle like trucks.  Their poor handling and inferior braking has been blamed for a disproportionate number of pedestrian deaths, too.  I was hit by a car once, as I was crossing the street.  I’m thankful that I wasn’t hit by an SUV!

SUVs cause more pollution than other cars, too.  Because they are held to different EPA pollution requirements, they’re allowed to emit more smog pollutants per mile than other cars. 

Many Americans feel “powerful” in their SUVs.  They should.  Some SUVs boast up to 590 horsepower engines!  Some feel that, in times of war, people need to feel as though they’re “in control.”  This temporary feeling of power while driving may account for some of the rise in SUV sales lately.  But with their poor gas mileage, Americans are actually giving the Middle East more power by owning one.  Isn’t this the time when we should be purchasing cars that are more fuel efficient?  Shouldn’t we be conserving fuel instead of wasting it? 

Let’s face it; SUVs are status symbols.  People who own them do so because they can.  Cadillacs are status symbols, too.  The difference is, though, that a Cadillac is safer, doesn’t use as much gas, fits in your garage and doesn’t block the view of the cars in back of you.  Okay, so you can’t take it off road.  But, only 5% of the people who buy SUVs take them off road anyway. 

Organizations like Earth on Empty (who “ticket” SUV drivers for being “selfish”) and Changing the Climate (who place bumper stickers on SUVs) are coming down really hard on SUV owners.  But, do SUV owners really deserve it?  Hey!  This is America after all!  If they want to buy a car that’s a complete waste of money, if they want to make the car companies even richer, if they want to put the lives of their families in danger every time they turn the ignition key, just so they can feel “important,” or “respected” or “envied,” SUV owners have every right to.

But when you get right down to it, the car companies have fooled them into thinking that “bigger” is “better,” when, in this case, it really isn’t.  And there’s nothing important, respectable or enviable about that!