Copyright 2002 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc. St.
Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
November 6, 2002 Wednesday Five Star Lift
Edition
SECTION: EVERYDAY MAGAZINE ; Pg. E6
LENGTH: 736 words
HEADLINE: AUTHOR TELLS WHY GAS-GUZZLING, DANGEROUS SUVS ARE SO
POPULAR
BYLINE: Repps Hudson Of The
Post-Dispatch
BODY: Sport utility
vehicles make up about 20 percent of the passenger vehicles sold today, yet they
cause more deaths and injuries than any other class. The automakers build them
on truck chasses, yet charge a handsome premium of several thousand dollars for
each one sold. Profits on each one can run into thousands of dollars.
Their gasoline mileage almost never tops 20 miles a
gallon, so they are contributing to Americans' increasing dependence on foreign
oil from such unstable areas as the Persian Gulf. Since the federal government
classifies SUVs as trucks, they must meet neither fuel
efficiency nor air pollution standards.
What's going on here?
The short answer: greed
on the part of the automakers and an all-too-familiar disregard for the public's
safety.
As they have for many years, auto executives
fall back on that old excuse that they are only giving the public what it
wants.
And buyers are hooking into the romantic image
of the SUV as a safe yet aggressive, powerful and nearly perfect vehicle in
which to transport their loved ones.
Automakers long
ago figured out that buyers fancy themselves running along the rim of the Grand
Canyon or racing hell-bent up a (formerly) pristine stream bed in a Jeepish
thing. Most never do it, but Walter Mit ty-like, they love to dream as they sit
in their offices or steam on congested freeways. Most drivers will never put
themselves - or their expensive SUVs - in such situations, but their romantic
imaginations are captured by the image of their own daring and
invulnerability.
"It is the product that has created
the demand, it's more the vehicle that has changed than the people," a Parisian
dealer of Land Rovers told Keith Bradsher, author of "High and Mighty." So even
rich Parisians, who pay a premium for gasoline because of high taxes and have no
Grand Canyon rims to run on, too are buying wasteful SUVs. As Bradsher points
out, mankind's love affair with sport utility vehicles seems to be just getting
started as they catch on around the world.
During one
of the periodic run-ups in gasoline prices last year, I posted myself at a Mobil
station in St. Louis with the sole purpose of asking SUV drivers how high
gasoline would have to go before they would stop driving their vehicles.
Gasoline was then about $1.75 for self-serve regular.
Most said they could not envision getting out of their Oldsmobile
Bravadas, Jeep Grand Cherokees and Chevy Suburbans for anything less than $3 a
gallon. The motorist whose comment stuck with me, though, was a young
businessman from Nigeria who was filling up a red, late-model Range Rover he had
bought used.
With a wide smile, he assured me that the
reason he came to the United States was so he could drive a big car that used a
lot of gasoline.
What an American way to think when
gasoline remains one of the cheapest products most of us buy, compared with what
it has cost over the past three decades.
My Nigerian
source also hit on the very reason that SUVs have become so popular: They are a
status symbol, evidence that one has made it. And yet, as Bradsher documents
exhaustively, they are more likely to kill or paralyze the driver and passengers
in rollovers, and they are most apt to kill or maim anyone in a smaller vehicle
if they collide.
"Perhaps the saddest part of the SUV
boom is that it has been so unnecessary," writes Bradsher, who covered the auto
industry for The New York Times from 1996 to 2001. "Automakers have learned so
much about designing more fuel-efficient, low-pollution engines that today's
large cars burn as little gasoline as the subcompacts of the early 1980s, while
emitting virtually no pollution. These large cars, like the Lincoln LS, Toyota
Avalon and Volvo S80, also provide superb safety for their occupants, with
extensive crumple zones, lots of air bags and scant susceptibility to
rollovers."
The author does not advocate banning these
dangerous vehicles. He wants Congress, the federal government and the auto
manufacturers to make the obvious improvements in safety, fuel economy and
emissions they already know how to make. And he does not advocate a lowering of
the cost of SUVs, just reducing their impact on human beings and the
environment.
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"High and Mighty: SUVs: The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How
They Got That Way"
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