Minor Editorial Rant on....

[kybearfuzz]

... sport utility vehicles and minivans.

I walked a mile to the grade school where I usually hit the tennis ball against the wall. It was nearly 6 PM and I figured that the parking lot would be empty as usual. Unfortunately, the school is doubling as a day care it seems and I was trying to hit the ball against the wall during evening pick-up.

Usually I'd get a few decent hits in and a minivan would need to drive through, then a few more and an Explorer would drive up. It got to the point where trying to play was pointless as an endless parade of huge vehicles came up with Mrs. Cleaver-esque ladies were getting out to pick up their little darlings. The number and size of the vehicles were impressive, especially in this day of enormous gas prices.

It struck me as odd as to why parents needed such large vehicles to pick up a single kid. It seems that they are getting larger by the day. I'm fairly certain a Hummer had driven up to get little Suzie before or after I played what little tennis I could. My sister says it's for safety purposes as she drives her black Blazer to get my nephew from school. She had a wreck in her last one. She and my nephew escaped with only a scratch or two, soiled undies, and messed up hair. She threw her fist in the air and proudly proclaimed that she wouldn't drive anything smaller.

My brother the twin is childless, but carts his precious cargo of golf clubs with his large SUV (I don't recall the make/model, but remember that it's a cute shade of green). I guess his clubs are very much his children as he cares for them with strict parental glee, often leaving them only unattended while they bask in the candlelit glow of his shrine to Saint Tiger Woods.



I have to wonder where the next craze will go. Will the military, in their zeal to put a positive spin on the Iraqi war and offset the enormous debt, try to market the surplus army tanks to soccer moms? Will Mrs. Brady be able to pick up Cindy from her speech therapy class and find decent parking in a drab olive Sherman? I think I can almost see the "My child beat up your honor student" bumper sticker on the back.

Yeah, I admit, I am a hypocrite of sorts, I've been pondering buying a Toyota Rav4, but it's not that big... hee hee...

Rant Clarification: For the record, it's not that I don't like SUV's, but rather that I didn't get to practice tennis because of them and their drivers. I must vent somehow and speaking out against soccer moms seems wrong. That is all :P

Comments

[jkusters]

Actually, there's a ton of evidence that SUVs are not safer. Or rather, they may be safer for the occupants, but much less safe for everyone else on the road. With their higher center of gravity and wider stance, they do not drive much like a car, more like a truck. Mrs. Cleaver, much more used to driving the family sedan, has all of the wrong learned instincts to be able to handle the thing in an emergency. She's (not limited to women, men have the same issues) much more likely to tip or roll the SUV, hit other cars with it, and injure the occupants of other drivers on the roads. Combine those stats with the fact that they don't have to match the stringent safety standards required of standard cars, and all of this talk of "safety" evaporates in the blown sunshine that it really is.

These three links were the first three when I searched on "SUVs not safe"

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2002/08/29/146479.html
http://www.suv.org/safety.html
http://www.cars.com/carsapp/national/?&srv=parser&act=display&tf=/news/archive/suvs_analysis.tmpl

JOhn.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks for the info, I'll pass it to my sister.