How many times have you been on the road and been cut off by an SUV driver who was completely unaware of your existence? It’s a common occurrence for people who are driving small cars. SUV’s, especially the larger ones, give drivers a feeling like they are above everyone else around them (they literally are) and will in fact make it seem like it’s only them who are on the road. It’s a great feeling of liberation and space for the driver of the SUV, but the risk to those around other people start to increase. Unless they’re driven in the country with off road tires and beadlock wheels, it has to be admitted that SUV’s are not a safe way to drive.
It was some time in th1980’s when a style of using off-road vehicles to move through the city and suburbs began to rise in popularity. This trend was of course encouraged by the car makers themselves, who sold the SUV with the notion that it was a much safer choice for families, and a much more attractive choice than buying a van.
One commercial, in particular, was indicative of the American way of thinking about SUV’s. The commercial showed footage of a normal sedan and an SUV driving into each other. The SUV came out of the crash relatively in one piece, while the smaller car was completely demolished. Then the commercial asked something in the nature of, “If you care about your family, shouldn’t you buy an SUV?” The ad created sales of larger vehicles to skyrocket, as people began to see SUV’s as the safer choice for driving out on the road. But you might have noted in the above advertisement what so many drivers happened to miss. While the SUV is obviously safe to be in during this accident, having such a big heavy object crash into them massively increases the risk to the other car. While driving SUV’s make the road seemingly safer for those within the vehicle, people in smaller cars on the road will be put in more and more danger.
This did not stop people who wanted SUV’s, from buying one, and the “soccer mom” trend was created. But there’s another issue not often considered that makes the SUV far less trustworthy than imagined, their tipping danger. Due to their structure, SUV’s are much more probably to tip over when twisting sharply at high speed. Numerous experiments have been done to show that SUVs can by no means be thought of as safe when they can flip so easily.
While these problems have been addressed to a small extent by car manufacturers, the SUV can still not be trusted as a completely safe vehicle. Before you decide to buy any car, look up the safety records that were produced from independent companies (not the car manufactures webpage) to note how safe it really is to have an SUV. Don’t trust the salesman who tells you there’s nothing wrong with taking a car twice the height of anything else on the road.
