[Timo]

From the NYT:

When Is a Car a Truck? If Uncle Sam Says So
By JAY ROSEN

This is one of the best books on American politics I have read recently, although it's supposed to be about cars. Actually it's about "light trucks," one of the many twists in the story of the sport utility vehicle and its dubious rise on the streets.

Pass, say, a Ford Explorer on the roadway, and you might say, "Wow, that's a big car," but you won't say, "That's a neat truck." According to the federal government, however, the Explorer is a truck. It's a truck for purposes of the Clean Air Act of 1990, passed by Congress to update the laws limiting smog-causing emissions. The act has less-stringent limits for trucks (local contractors need them for work, you see), so getting S.U.V.'s classified as trucks is a political feat worth quite a bit to the auto industry. It's also a tricky class maneuver, since the exemption's benefits are passing from working class to more affluent Americans.
Advertisement

Thus the Explorer's pricier cousin, the Lincoln Navigator, is considered a truck for purposes of calculating the 10 percent luxury tax the 1990 Congress slapped on cars with price tags of $30,000 or more. That law, like many others, exempted "light trucks," in this case those with a gross weight over 6,000 pounds. The Navigator grew to that size as Ford added luxury features but included in the price no luxury tax because it's not a car, stupid, it's a kind of luxury truck. Thus does politics make for strange markets, even though it's true that a market is definitely there among ordinary American car buyers, a huge portion of whom have found S.U.V.'s to their liking.

That liking and the way it was coaxed forward, manipulated by the auto industry, is a further theme in Keith Bradsher's marvelously told book. Mr. Bradsher, a correspondent for The New York Times, was the paper's Detroit bureau chief from 1996 to 2001. "High and Mighty" is his study in Washington politics and the ways of Detroit, but also the politics of our roadways and the social psychology of Americans as drivers.

The S.U.V., it turns out, is a vehicle of aggression, a machine to menace other people with. It was understood and marketed that way by an auto industry that itself behaved cynically and aggressively in securing loopholes and exemptions that made the S.U.V. so fantastically profitable.

The key product line in the industry during the 1990's, S.U.V.'s helped revive the economy of the upper Midwest, including two states � Michigan and Ohio � that are heavily contested in presidential elections. Mr. Bradsher describes how a single Ford factory in Michigan produced $11 billion in annual S.U.V. sales (equal to the size of McDonald's global sales) and $3.7 billion in pretax profits from one factory.

This would all make for a routine story of sky-high success were it not that S.U.V.'s are more dangerous in some collisions than other cars, tend to roll over more, pollute the air more, get worse gas mileage and effectively undo much of the legislation Congress passed to force innovation on these things. Mr. Bradsher calls S.U.V.'s the world's most dangerous vehicles (and cites data to prove it), but it would be equally accurate to say it's the most antisocial.

One of the attractions, after all, is the driver gets perched above other cars. Looking down on passing traffic gives some illusion of highway command. The machines are actually "tippy monstrosities with mediocre brakes that block other drivers' view of the road and inflict massive damage during collisions."

Consider four-wheel drive, a defining feature of S.U.V.'s and their advertisements. It's superfluous, a fake attraction. "All of the S.U.V. market was psychological, there was no actual customer need for four-wheel drive," says William R. Chapin, former American Motors Company executive who was a senior marketer of Jeep, the brand from which all S.U.V.'s descend.

Jeep, now owned by Chrysler, dates from America's industrial ramp up before World War II. It was the cheap, boxy, utilitarian vehicle the Army needed then. The Jeep's descendant, the S.U.V., appeals to affluent baby boomers who like the idea of going off road even though they will probably never do it. S.U.V. drivers are anxious about safety, but Detroit has conned them into thinking that a bigger, heavier, taller vehicle is safe because it feels strong and intimidating and looks "likely to demolish other people's cars in collisions," as Mr. Bradsher writes.

This is mostly the result of theatricality in front-end design and vehicle bulk. The Dodge Durango is supposed to look like a savage jungle cat, says a Chrysler marketing whiz, Clotaire Rapaille. "A strong animal has a big jaw, that's why we put big fenders," he says. Another Chrysler executive, David Bostwick, says the S.U.V. is "aggressive on the outside and it's the Ritz-Carlton on the inside." Menacing but comfy is the mood struck.

Mr. Bradsher makes a crucial point when he notes that the auto industry generates very sophisticated data about Americans and their social mood, with sample sizes of 10,000 compared with 400 for many public opinion polls. He is right to zero in on the social psychology of the S.U.V. because a serious journalist has to explain how this inferior, dangerous and antisocial product surged in market share during the 1990's. Are we getting dumber? During an information revolution?

Part of the answer is politics, and not just the lobbying might of the auto industry or its unions. Mr. Bradsher openly jeers at the record of the environmental movement in sounding the alarm about S.U.V.'s and the hidden import of the light truck exemption. That watchdog failed, he says. He criticizes the press for showing up at the industry's showcase events and losing the bigger story: power politics in Washington and Detroit that delegislated the work of Congress. It was a misdirection play. The real news about cars was being written in the language of trucks, and a confluence of interests wanted it that way.

"Perhaps the saddest part of the S.U.V. boom is that it has been so unnecessary," Mr. Bradsher writes in a final chapter. The auto companies had become smarter. They had learned how to make roomy and comfortable cars with fuel-efficient, low-polluting engines. The philosopher John Dewey would have called this an intelligent state of affairs. How it came undone is Keith Bradsher's menacing story, and I think he has it cold.

Jay Rosen is chairman of the journalism department at New York University and the author of "What Are Journalists For?"

[Inquisition68]

This is what I said a few weeks back. Democrats wanted cleaner safer vehicles. (good idea)! The legislated all these standards but excluded trucks. (dumb idea!)

Now we have SUVs.

Thank you democrats.

- Ca$h

[Eug]

I work in an affluent area. After each big snowfall, there are several SUVs littering the sidewalk, and usually less sedans, despite the fact that sedans outnumber SUVs.

Some of these SUVs even have 4WD.

Conclusion, SUVs are not safer because the soccer mom/dad types who drive them often shouldn't be driving them. (In fact sometimes I wonder if they should be driving at all, much less driving a humungous TRUCK.)

People say bigger is better (in a collision with another car), but I'm starting to wonder if all of that is negated by the fact that these TRUCKS handle like crap compared to a good sedan.

I like 4WD drive SUVs on icy mountain roads. However, I hate driving them in standard rush hour traffic. I feel like I'm steering a yacht.

Anyways, what are the statistics of the various types of accidents with SUVs vs. sedans?

[cjrivera]

Originally posted by Timo:
From the NYT:


Thus the Explorer's pricier cousin, the Lincoln Navigator, is considered a truck for purposes of calculating the 10 percent luxury tax the 1990 Congress slapped on cars with price tags of $30,000 or more. That law, like many others, exempted "light trucks," in this case those with a gross weight over 6,000 pounds. The Navigator grew to that size as Ford added luxury features but included in the price no luxury tax because it's not a car, stupid, it's a kind of luxury truck. Thus does politics make for strange markets, even though it's true that a market is definitely there among ordinary American car buyers, a huge portion of whom have found S.U.V.'s to their liking.

Actually, the Navigator is more of a cousin to the Expedition, not the Explorer.
The Navigator did not "grow to that size" with "luxury features". It's based on the bigger/heavier Expedition platform.

(added)

Another reason the Explorer is classified as a "light truck" is that it is based on a "light truck" - the Ford Ranger. (Engine, transmission, wheelbase, etc.)

[BRussell]

hehe funny article.

I've looked at SUVs before, and they're just so damn expensive. I just don't want to spend that much money on a vehicle. I don't think I'm poor, but I don't want to spend half of my after-tax yearly salary on something like that. And the worst thing you can do is take out a loan on something that is depreciating in value as you pay off your loan.


There's no worse investment than a car. Homes are status symbols too, but they're also investments that appreciate in value. Vehicles depreciate like a ton of bricks. I judge people by their vehicles. If yours is flashy or late model or expensive, I assume you're a moron.

[Inquisition68]

Yep. Its an Expedition. They're both useless stupid vehicles that couldn't out manuver anything if someone hit their brakes in front of them.

SUVs CAUSE accidents due to their sheer weight, crappy handling, and shitty brakes.

- Ca$h

[Inquisition68]

Originally posted by BRussell:
hehe funny article.
If yours is flashy or late model or expensive, I assume you're a moron.

What if its flashy and fast and cheap?



AWD too. heheh

- Ca$h

[Timo]

1. Ca$h, whaddya doin' with 'hota plates on your sled?

2. Perhaps SUV drivers should have a specific truck endorsement on their driver license. You could have the test be specificly about handling and braking issues assoicated with a two-ton vehicle.

[Nimisys]

what i don;lt understand is why everyone wants them to be cars and have them follow by the same rules as cars when they are trucks and nothing more.

[Mediaman_12]

Originally posted by Timo:
Perhaps SUV drivers should have a specific truck endorsement on their driver license. You could have the test be specificly about handling and braking issues assoicated with a two-ton vehicle.

We (the UK) almost did this. Way before SUV's and Minivan's (people carriers) became popular, there was a Motorway accident where a teacher in a school Minibus (like a small van with seats, in the back) came off the roadway and hit a sign. The teacher died along with a load of kids in the back of the bus.
As a result of this a law was proposed that to drive vehicles that can carry more than 5 people (ie biger than regular cars) you would have to pass a special license. When it finally got passed it had been amended to 8 people, and private vehicles where exempt.
If this had been passed un-amended you would have needed a special license to drive most SUV & People Carrier class cars.

[zigzag]

My theory on SUVs: they represent the American ideals/myths of egalitarianism, pragmatism, and rugged individualism.

Egalitarianism because they are relatively free of the class connotations of other cars - Cadillacs, Saabs, Pintos, etc. You can drive one without being pegged. You're just a regular American. I think it's kind of a cool idea, at least in the abstract. I think it's partly what motivates a lot of the people who buy them. They are anti-status status cars.

This, of course, has become corrupted as more and more people drive ultra-luxury show-off SUVs. But that's to be expected.

Pragmatism because they not only have real pragmatic advantages - sitting above traffic, spaciousness, etc. - they also express the idea of pragmatism. Thus, even if the owner is a diamond-encrusted bimbo, by driving an SUV she communicates to others that she's really just a down-home girl who happens to f**k rich guys.

Rugged individualism because they allow everyone to sorta play cowboy. They might never go off-road, but who's to know? The image is intact.

Of course, there are those who drive them simply because they find them suitable, which is fine. When I lived in Arizona in the 70's, I drove a Blazer. At that time it didn't occur to anyone that they were fashionable - they just seemed suitable in the desert. I haven't driven one since and have no plans to - I like sitting up high but hate having to take corners at half-speed and burning gas like it was going out of style.

Originally posted by Inquisition68:
They're both useless stupid vehicles ...

Don't you mean "stupid useless vehicles"? Isn't that what the letters SUV stand for?

[Timo]

Hee hee, another review of the book. This review speaks, like ziggy's post, to the image of the SUV:

Bumper Mentality by Stephanie Mencimer

Have you ever wondered why sport utility vehicle drivers seem like such assholes? Surely it's no coincidence that Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, tours Washington in one of the biggest SUVs on the market, the Cadillac Escalade, or that Jesse Ventura loves the Lincoln Navigator. Well, according to New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher's new book, High and Mighty, the connection between the two isn't a coincidence. Unlike any other vehicle before it, the SUV is the car of choice for the nation's most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be.

According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others."

He says, too, that SUV drivers generally don't care about anyone else's kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what's practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them. David Bostwick, Chrysler's market research director, tells Bradsher, "If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in the back and pretend you're still single."

Armed with such research, automakers have, over the past decade, ramped up their SUV designs to appeal even more to the "reptilian" instincts of the many Americans who are attracted to SUVs not because of their perceived safety, but for their obvious aggressiveness. Automakers have intentionally designed the latest models to resemble ferocious animals. The Dodge Durango, for instance, was built to resemble a savage jungle cat, with vertical bars across the grille to represent teeth and big jaw-like fenders. Bradsher quotes a former Ford market researcher who says the SUV craze is "about not letting anything get in your way, and at the extreme, about intimidating others to get out of your way."

Not surprisingly, most SUV customers over the past decade hail from a group that is the embodiment of American narcissism: baby boomers. Affluent, and often socially liberal, baby boomers have embraced the four-wheel-drive SUV as a symbol of their ability to defy the conventions of old age, of their independence and "outdoorsiness," making the off-road vehicle a force to be reckoned with on the American blacktop. But as Bradsher declares in his title, this baby boomer fetish is considerably more harmful than the mere annoyance of yet another Rolling Stones tour or the endless commercials for Propecia. In their attempt to appear youthful and hip, SUV owners have filled the American highways with vehicles that exact a distinctly human cost, frequently killing innocent drivers who would have survived a collision with a lesser vehicle. Bradsher quotes auto execs who concede that the self-centered lifestyle of SUV buyers is apparent in "their willingness to endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety."

After covering the auto industry for six years, Bradsher is an unabashed critic of sports-utility vehicles and the automakers that continue to churn them out knowing full well the dangers they pose. He doesn't equivocate in his feeling that driving an SUV is a deeply immoral act that places the driver's own ego above the health and safety of those around him, not to mention the health of the environment. Ironically, and though most supposedly safety-conscious owners don't realize it, SUVs even imperil those who drive them.

Road Rodeo

Ask a typical SUV driver why he drives such a formidable vehicle, and he'll invariably insist that it's for safety reasons--the kids, you know--not because he's too vain to get behind the wheel of a sissy Ford Windstar. Automakers themselves know otherwise--their own market research tells them so. But Bradsher makes painfully clear that the belief in SUV safety is a delusion. For decades, automakers seeking to avoid tougher fuel economy standards have invoked the fiction that the bigger the car, the safer the passenger. As a result, most Americans take it on faith that the only way to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing--a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs.

The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars--8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed. On top of that, SUV roofs are not reinforced to protect the occupants against rollover; nor does the government require them to be.

Because of their vehicles' size and four-wheel drive capability, SUV drivers tend to overestimate their own security, which prompts many to drive like maniacs, particularly in inclement weather. And SUV drivers--ever image-conscious and overconfident--seem to hate seat belts as much as they love talking on their cell phones while driving. Bradsher reports that four-fifths of those killed in roll-overs were not belted in, even though 75 percent of the general driving population now buckles up regularly.

While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.

Part of the reason for the high kill rate is that cars offer very little protection against an SUV hitting them from the side--not because of the weight, but because of the design. When a car is hit from the side by another car, the victim is 6.6 times as likely to die as the aggressor. But if the aggressor is an SUV, the car driver's relative chance of dying rises to 30 to 1, because the hood of an SUV is so high off the ground. Rather than hitting the reinforced doors of a car with its bumper, an SUV will slam into more vulnerable areas and strike a car driver in the head or chest, where injuries are more life-threatening. But before you get an SUV just for defensive purposes, think again. Any safety gains that might accrue are cancelled out by the high risk of rollover deaths, which usually don't involve other cars.

Ironically, SUVs are particularly dangerous for children, whose safety is often the rationale for buying them in the first place. Because these beasts are so big and hard to see around (and often equipped with dark-tinted glass that's illegal in cars), SUV drivers have a troubling tendency to run over their own kids. Just recently, in October, a wealthy Long Island doctor made headlines after he ran over and killed his two-year-old in the driveway with his BMW X5. He told police he thought he'd hit the curb.

To illustrate the kind of selfishness that marks some SUV drivers, Bradsher finds people who rave about how they've survived accidents with barely a scratch, yet neglected to mention that the people in the other car were all killed. (One such woman confesses rather chillingly to Bradsher that her first response after killing another driver was to go out and get an even bigger SUV.) The tragedy of SUVs is that highway fatalities were actually in decline before SUVs came into vogue, even though Americans were driving farther. This is true largely for one simple reason: the seatbelt. Seatbelt usage rose from 14 percent in 1984 to 73 percent in 2001. But seatbelts aren't much help if you're sideswiped by an Escalade, a prospect that looms yet more ominously as SUVs enter the used-car market. Not surprisingly, last year, for the first time in a decade, the number of highway deaths actually rose.

[continued]

[Timo]

[continued]

No Roads Scholars Here

Bradsher blames government for failing to adequately regulate SUVs, but doesn't fully acknowledge the degree to which it has encouraged SUV production by becoming a major consumer of them. Law enforcement and public safety agencies in particular seem enamored of the menacing vehicles, a fact on proud display when officers finally apprehended the alleged snipers in the Washington, D.C., area and transported them to the federal courthouse in a parade of black Ford Explorers and Expeditions. Judging from the number of official SUVs on the road today, law enforcement officials--those most likely to know firsthand the grisly effects of a rollover--are enthusiastic customers. Like the rest of America, police departments seem to believe that replacing safe, sturdy cars with SUVs is a good idea, though it's hard to imagine a more dangerous vehicle for an officer conducting a high-speed chase.

Government's taste for SUVs isn't limited to cops and firemen. There's hardly a city in America where the mayor's chauffeured Lincoln Town Car hasn't been replaced by an SUV. In Virginia, where state officials recently discovered that SUVs were wrecking their efforts to meet clean-air regulations, a few noted sheepishly that perhaps local governments should sell their own fleets, which had ballooned to 250 in Fairfax County alone. (A Fairfax County official told The Washington Post that public safety officials needed four-wheel drive and large cargo spaces to transport extra people and emergency equipment through snow or heavy rain--proof that even law enforcement officials misunderstand SUV safety records.)

As Bradsher details, because of their weight, shoddy brakes, and off-road tires, SUVs handle poorly in bad weather and have trouble stopping on slick roads. What's more, they're generally so poorly designed as not to be capable of carrying much cargo, despite the space. A contributing factor in the Ford Explorer-Firestone tire debacle was that drivers weren't told that their Explorers shouldn't carry any more weight than a Ford Taurus. The extra weight routinely piled in these big cars stressed the tires in a way that made them fall apart faster and contributed to the spate of rollover deaths.

I have a hunch that government officials' justification for buying SUVs is mostly a ruse for their real motivation, which is the same as any other SUV owner's: image. Officials can safely load up their fleets with leather-seated SUVs, whereas using taxpayer dollars to buy themselves, say, a fleet of BMW coupes would get them crucified (even though Detroit considers SUVs luxury vehicles and designs them accordingly). Police departments may claim that they need an SUV to accommodate SWAT teams or canine units, but there is no reason that Sparky the drug dog wouldn't be just as comfortable in the back of a nice safe Chevy Astrovan.

The same is true for nearly everyone who drives an SUV today. Of course, not every SUV owner is gripped by insecurity and a death wish--plenty of otherwise reasonable people seem to get seduced by power and size (see sidebar). But if soccer moms and office-park dads really need to ferry a lot of people around, they could simply get a large car or a minivan, which Bradsher hails as a great innovation for its fuel efficiency, safety, and lower pollution. (And minivans don't have a disproportionately high kill rate for motorists or pedestrians when they get into accidents.) According to industry market research, minivan drivers also tend to be very nice people. Minivans are favored by senior citizens and others (male and female, equally) who volunteer for their churches and carpool with other people's kids. But that's the problem. SUV owners buy them precisely because they don't want the "soccer mom" stigma associated with minivans.

While Bradsher does a magnificent job of shattering the myths about SUVs, he has a difficult time proposing a solution. Sport utility vehicles have become like guns: Everyone knows they're dangerous, but you can't exactly force millions of Americans to give them up overnight. And because the SUV is single-handedly responsible for revitalizing the once-depressed American auto industry, the economy is now so dependent on their production that it would be nearly impossible to get them off the road. Bradsher suggests regulating SUVs like cars rather than as light trucks, so that they would be forced to comply with fuel-efficiency standards and safety regulations. He also proposes that the insurance industry stop shifting the high costs of the SUV dangers onto car owners by raising premium prices for SUVs to reflect the amount of damage they cause. But these ideas, commendable though they are, fall short of a perfect answer.

Clearly, the best solution would be for Americans to realize the danger of SUVs and simply stop buying them. Social pressure can be a powerful determinant on car choices, as seen in Japan, the one country where SUVs have not caught on because of cultural checks that emphasize the good of the community over that of the individual. There are signs that perhaps public sentiment is beginning to shift against SUV drivers here, too, as activists have begun to leave nasty flyers on SUV windshields berating drivers for fouling the environment and other offenses. But for a true reckoning to take place, image-obsessed Americans will need to fully understand the SUV's true dangers--including to themselves--before they will willingly abandon it to the junkyard. Spreading that message against the nation's biggest advertiser--the auto industry--will be tough work. Drivers can only hope that Bradsher's book will cut through the chatter.

Stephanie Mencimer is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly.

[chris v]

Originally posted by Timo:
[B]Hee hee, another review of the book. This review speaks, like ziggy's post, to the image of the SUV:

Bumper Mentality by Stephanie Mencimer

This took "research?" Anyone who drives anything BUT knows all of this intuiitively.

CV*



*who drives a dented '91 Pathfinder, because unlike most SUV drivers, I need to go offroad with some regularity, and it was small, comparatively, cheap ($2600.00: I let the first owner take a bath on the blue-book value) and has a damn good low gear. Does that make me a hypocrite? I drive real friendly.