Huge study about safety can be misinterpreted by SUV drivers

Your deliberate obtuseness is noted. I said *TO OTHER TRAFFIC.*
Therefore all the safety equipment in the world will not change the fact
that an SUV has greater mass and CG height.

Yes, and it's true quite a bit of the time. Even if you can cherrypick
some numbers that show slightly greater cornering ability for a given
SUV than some other particular car, that in no way negates that there
are still drawbacks in transient (i.e. real world) maneuvers
necessitated by the basic SUV shape.

Unless you're comparing vehicles at significantly different price
points, they're so rare that they effectively don't exist.

Where have I ever said that I insisted that my way was the only right
way? I enjoy autocrossing and also touring in old cars. That's two
flavors of driving. I can also respect and enjoy discussions of all
sorts of other driving - road racing, drag racing, off roading, rock
crawling, dirt track racing, even discussions of proper ways to drive on
public highways - and many more that I am neglecting to include.
However, I fail to see how your assertion that you bought an SUV because
you wanted the safest vehicle for your family a) makes sense or b)
belongs in a newsgroup about driving. The on-road-only, mega-buxx,
leather-trimmed and Wilton-carpeted SUV is the classic vehicle of people
who don't enjoy driving, and want to be insulated from the task of
driving as much as possible. How about rec.autos.dont-believe-the-hype?

You're welcome.

nate

 

HuH? Where do you mention other traffic in this tidbit (to which I was
replying)?

">>>Is it not a fact that a SUV by necessity has a higher CG height to

LOL. "quite a bit of the time" How do you quantify that?

Even if you can cherrypick

Your cluelessness continues to manifest itself in an amusing way.

Can you grasp the fact that there is more to the way some SUVs
handle/react in transient maneuvers than your simplistic "basic SUV
shape"?

AHHHHH....so this is the part where Nate backpedals from his hilarious
gross generalizations and brings price into the mix.

That doesn't bode well for your comments wherein you lump all SUVs
into the same group does it Nate?

"rare" LOL. You're still really confused Nate.

Your whines about "getting back to talking about driving" certainly
indicate some level of angst regarding SUV discussions which you
apparently just can't resist!

I enjoy autocrossing and also touring in old cars. That's two

It belongs in a newsgroup about driving because a) it was in respnse
to more siilly claims about the eviol of SUVs and b) because my
truthful comments caused myopic folks like to to flail around
spectacularly and c) because it's quite true that I bought my SUV
because it's a very safe vehicle (poor form Nate to try to recast my
comments using the absolute "safest" tsk, tsk, tsk).


The on-road-only, mega-buxx,

At least you're consistent in your cluelessness.

Why do you assume that my SUV is "on-road-only" and that folks who
happen to own an SUV, or any SUV for that matter, want to be
insulated from the task of driving?

Damn. That's hilarious stuff Nate.

Thanks again you "driving enthusiast" you! ROTFLMAO!

 

Lloyd,
Are you a Lliberal?
LLOL

 

I've an SUV, and it spends a lot of time offroad.
I got it cause it could get up to the deer hunting areas so I didn't have to
haul a carcase miles, but it handles onroad as sweet as you please.

rhys

 

The best I can find for a V8 is 14/19 EPA rating. Your mileage seems
anomalous.

Marc
For email, remove the first "y" of "whineryy"

 

The conservatives wouldn't allow it until we privatized the police. They
all watch RoboCop and wish that all police departments could be as
efficient as OCP.

Marc
For email, remove the first "y" of "whineryy"

 

Which doesn't change the veracity of my original statement.

--Aardwolf.

 

1. What percentage of the current vehicle population do pre-1975 cars make up?

2. As to how clean they look, it's relative. It has to do with the magnitude of
the stuff coming out the pipe of a gross polluter. Which is absolutely not false.

--Aardwolf.

 

Back when station wagons were popular, there were no SUV's (at least not
like they are known today with interior A/C and DVD player, etc.) If you
could mandate that all SUV production be replaced by station wagon
production, you might have something there. But given a choice between
a large station wagon and a SUV I think your smoking weed if you seriously
believe that a large market segment would give their SUV's up to go to
station wagons.

All that repeal of CAFE would do is allow the automakers to build bigger
sedans. So, today's "full size" sedan would become tomorrow's mid-size,
and todays mid-size would become tomorrow's economy sedan, and
today's economy sedan would disappear.

You might then get a small percentage of SUV buyers to buy the largest
sedans that would become available, but that's about it.

Ted

 

It's actually the conservatives that are anti-government and want to
repeal all government regulations, Bill. (except those dealing with
flag burning and medical marijuana, of course)

The State of Washington (our northern neighbors) tried last year to
bring some money in to pay for road upkeep and such by raising
the vehicle registration fees. Do you know who fought that and
managed to get it repealed? It wasn't the liberals.

Ted

 

That is a point. However, it's not that strong a point and here is why.
For
starters, when we are talking expendables, the only ones that really matter
here are fuel, as vehicle fuel dwarfs the expendable consumption of every
other expendable on the vehicle. So let's be honest and say gas/fuel.

In the world, (not just the US) just about every non-mideast country is a
net importer of oil. There are a few notable exceptions of course, but
they don't set the world oil price, OPEC does.

So here is the problem from the US's side. Every barrel of oil
consumed that is over the US max production is subject to
artifical price control by OPEC, which is accomplished by artifical
limiting of the oil supply. Simply put, that price control is bad for
the US's economy. The upshot is that even though Billy Bob might have
to pay more for fuel, the fact that he is consuming more fuel and
thus helping to increase the oil demand past what the US can supply
makes prices rise for ALL fuel purchasers.

People drive on more than just roads, there's bridges, traffic
control devices like speed bumps, and street signage such as
crosswalk stripes, etc. Heavier vehicles wear more. Look at
any major intersection and you will see the lines worn, in many
cases worn right away. Heavier traffic wears more. Granted,
semitrucks wear the streets out far more than SUV's do, but
when was the last time you ever saw a bicyle lane that had a
big groove worn away on the pictures of bikes and the wording
"bike lane" where the tires of the bicycle had worn away the wording.

No, because as the numbers of large, heavy vehicles on the road
increase, the average injuries and deaths increase for the sedan
drivers, thus driving up their insurance.

The context of your post made it sound like you were arguing that light
trucks and SUV's are more popular than sedans, that is what I was
objecting to.

No I said they aren't "so popular"

I didn't say that they are all being bought for their vanity. I said
"everyone who has a light truck or
an SUV are going to give them up" in my statement above.

I do allow that if bigger sedans were available that some SUV purchasers
would elect to buy a big sedan. Espically if the sedan has a drivers seat
in it that is a foot higher than the average sedan today. But I don't
think that a majority of SUV purchasers AS A WHOLE are vanity purchasers.
Keep in mind the large number of SUV's purchased in rural areas where they
are needed.

But I would definitely argue that the majority of SUV owners who live IN
THE MAJOR CITIES OF THE COUNTRY are in fact, vanity purchasers.

I would say that just about all light trucks and SUV's purchased in towns
smaller than 20,000 people and in rural areas are bought for their utility.
I would say that the large majority of them purchased in big cities are
vanity
purchases. Taking the total SUV's and light trucks sold in both areas and
averaging them together, I think you probably would find that a majority of
them are utility purchases -
if there was any way to reliably survey such a thing which there really
isn't,
as your basically asking people if they are idiots or not -
but NOT that big of a majority.

Ted

 

No, actually what your arguing, far from being sarcastic, is the truth.
Obese
people (I notice you use the politically loaded term fat, rather than the
term obese) have more medical problems espically as they age than
people who aren't obese. If every obese person could completely
pay their way through every health care facility they go through then
there would be no problem. But, the fact is that in the US, the majority
of people are covered under some sort of group health policy. The
insurance companies that write those are prohibited by law from
charging more money to obese people, so the thin people end up
funding the medical problems of the obese people. (can you
say heart bypass operations?)

And the Billy Bob I was using as an exampe wasn't driving a semi
truck. He was driving a 40 foot long cracker box, ie: recreational
vehicle. I forget that our European friends may not be familar with
all the deragotory slang terms in use in the US. The term cracker
box came about because the giant RV's look like saltine cracker
boxes with wheels, going down the road.

And as for semi-truck drivers, do they really pay their way? let's
see, how many states have repealed weight-mile taxes due to
pressure from the trucking industry? And as for semitrucks bringing
me a service, well yes they do, I would prefer to pay for it through
higher prices for consumer items, than higher taxes paid to the
government that are then spent on roads. That way I have a choice
to not purchase the consumer item if I choose.

Ted

 

Geeze, Bill, did you take Liberal pills this morning? Your starting to
sound
like a goddam tree hugger!

I think you forget that the conservatives are the ones that spearheaded
lowering government taxes across the board (thank you Mr. Regan)
beginning in 1980. The argument was that private industry would take
care of the problem better. Thus now we all pay admissions to get into
the national parks, fees for kids to do sports in school, etc. etc. because
the government has been cutting the taxes paid into the general fund,
and increasing the usage taxes for specific things, to do as you put it,
"micromanage all costs so that no-one has one penny advantage
over anyone else" This is all straight conservative dogma.

The liberals that have been telling your friends in the White House
to stay out of micromamaging California's medical marjuana laws
are most definitely against further federal government intrusion.
So are the flag burners. So are the people who are opposed to the
federal government mandating the phrase "under god" in the
Pledge of Allegance.

Funny how both the liberals and conservatives will drag out the
arguments of "let's not micromanage" whenever their particular
ox is being gored.

Ted

 

Speaking as someone who had cancer I am somewhat amused at
these arguments. I don't recall reading that we only have a pot of
a fixed amount of money and we can either spend it on cancer or
spend it on fighting terrorism.

It seems to me that cancer spending hasn't been much affected by
anything else going on, and that when the US government decided
to spend a bunch of money on terrorism, they just did the usual
thing of firing up the printing presses and printing more money
(ie: deficit spending)

One other thing you might consider is the law of diminishing returns.
So far it appears that we are a long, long way from hitting the area
of diminishing returns on anti-terrorism spending, or for that matter,
spending on fighting crime of any kind. It seems pretty clear right
now that law enforcement has had 20 years of budget cutting
to the point that most police departments in the country are totally
incapabable of capturing more than 10% of all criminals, and only
the stupid ones at that. How many times do we read in the papers of
yet another group of people defrauded by some scammer that
disappears into the night?

By contrast, cancer research can only proceed as fast as it can proceed.
We all want to be well and many people want to believe that throwing
money at a problem like researching cancer is going to somehow make
the research go faster. However I think all it does is flood the granting
institutions with money they have no use for, so as a result they end up
funding these redicuous grants for research like that "thrill research"
that some joker posted in this NG a week or so back. In any case,
the major pharmecutical companies have plenty of money that they
have been throwing at drug research on cancer drugs for the last 50
years.

Ted

 

Last time I took my Datsun 210 through emissions they did not dyno it,
only used a tailpipe sniffer and tachometer. This may have changed by
now, that was a couple years ago. They did dyno the 84 Chevy, though.
No doubt testing methodology is different in different states, but I had
thought that the EPA only mandates the state do emissions testing
for certain areas, and leaves a lot of the methodology up to the states.
Fore sure, in Oregon if your registered in certain counties you are not
required to pass emissions inspection.

Ted

 

Parker's law -- insult me and liberals, don't whine about getting insulted
back. Stones, glass houses, and all that.

 

I seem to remember a C/D road test of a full-size Chevy pickup that got below
10 mpg, as did the CR test of the Excursion.

 

Come on, Bush and his people keep linking Saddam and 9/11 by mentioning them
in the same sentence. No wonder 70% or so of Americans think Saddam was
behind 9/11.

The Saudi royal family did that too.