I Hate SUVs

Even the most ardent planet-hater to admit that the Nissan Qashqai has a very, very stupid name.  Wikipedia reckons that:

The Qashqai name (pronounced [qaʃqaːʔiː] comes from the originally Qashqai tribe in southwestern Iran (Persia). Nissan‘s designers say they believe that its buyers will be nomadic in nature too.

So there you go.  Drive one of these aberrations and you too can emulate a Persian nomadic tribesman.  Except I suspect that an Iranian nomad might have slightly higher aesthetic standards…

The state of Georgia in the US collated some interesting statistics about SUVs which makes fascinating reading.  Two highlights:

39 percent of Americans feel more powerful when they are driving or riding in an SUV.  (National Consumer Survey, Opinion Research Corporation, January 2005)

Evidence of the double whammy: not only are SUVs more dangerous due to physics, they’re also more dangerous because their owners turn into even bigger morons when they get behind the wheel.

In 2006 SUVs had the highest occupant fatality rate of any vehicle type in rollover crashes at 7.77 per 100,000 registered vehicles.  This compares with 6.98 for pickup trucks, 3.10 for vans and 3.18 for passenger cars. (Insurance Information Institute)

That’s occupant fatality.  SUVs won’t just kill those around you, they’ll kill you too.

Source: http://www.georgia.gov/00/article/0,2086,5426814_39039081_38820612,00.html

A very warm welcome to you.  Why this blog?  Here’s five points:

1. SUVs are bad for the environment, primarily because they are heavy, and not very aerodynamic, so they use more fuel
2. Most SUVs are much more likely than cars to kill pedestrians, due to a combination of a higher level of kinetic energy (proportional to mass) and a high bonnet level which tends to mash the skull.  That’s before the addition of ‘bull bars’, which are designed to cause as much damage to living things as possible.
3. An SUV is an engineering anachronism: instead of what’s called ‘unibody’ construction, where a car’s chassis and body are built as one, leading to better stiffness for handling and stability (and safety!), SUVs are built like a truck, with a body bolted on to a separate chassis.  That’s engineering which has been obsolete for at least 40 years, and is like watching television on a seven-inch bakelite-covered black and white set.
4. SUVs are aesthetically insulting.  They are grossly ugly, their high ride-height and badly-chiselled lines act as an assault on the visual senses
5. More than anything, an SUV owner is saying “I don’t care about you”.  Well fair enough, but don’t be surprised if you get a little hate in return

Read on for more blogging against automotive idiocy!