[extropy-chat] Real Extropians don't drive SUVs

[J. Andrew Rogers]

BillK wrote:
> 
> Why should we care whether in certain specific circumstances an SUV
> might be preferred? The road death figures show that SUVs are killing
> their drivers in increasing numbers.


SUVs are in all likelihood killing people who made stupid choices,
whether how they drive or in their choice of vehicles in which to drive.

The problem is ultimately ignorance, not SUVs.  SUVs are very safe *if
used correctly*, and safer than any other vehicle under many conditions.
 Most of the drivers I see around here are soccer moms playing Pole
Position on the freeway, completely oblivious to the parameters that
were assumed in the design of the vehicle to make it off-road worthy and
causing a market shift such that most SUVs now made are not actually
off-road worthy to compensate for the poor driving of the people who buy
them now.  And even if they are off-road capable, most people do not
have the slightest clue how to drive off-road.  Owning an SUV no more
makes you off-road ready than owning a computer makes you a software
engineer, and the lack of even basic knowledge of this among suburban
owners of SUVs explains 100% of all stranded "off-roaders" I've pulled
out of the wilderness over the years.

There is nothing inherently unsafe about SUVs, it is just that a larger
percentage of the people who drive them now know nothing about how to
drive them and so treat them like some type of indestructible car.  In
other words, an education problem.  It is the same as how virtually all
firearm accidents happen because some fool wasn't following the basic
rules of firearm safety or didn't feel the need to learn them.  If you
give unfamiliar power tools to monkeys, bad things are bound to happen.


j. andrew rogers