Health Warnings for SUVs
by TreeHugger on 12. 3.04
Cancer kills. So many countries require tobacco products to carry large warnings on packets and advertising. A UK-based, award-winning, think tank, the New Economic Foundation, believes Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs)* also kill, especially through their contribution to global warming and should come with the same style warnings. NEP point out that SUVs, compared to other vehicles, are “disproportionately responsible for emissions of ...
... both climate change fuelling CO2, other air pollutants, and traffic fatalities and injuries.“ Indeed they quote a World Health Organisation report that transport will, by 2020, overtake TB, HIV and war to become the world’s third most common cause of death and disability. Scary stuff. So NEP have generated this 'artists impression' to promote their point. If you can’t make out the sign on the door of the car, it reads “Driving endangers your baby and other children” ::New Economic Foundation [by WM]
* In Australia, we call them Four Wheel Drives (4WDs). So in a rearguard action, to stubbornly stem the globalisation of language, this correspondent will henceforth refer to them by his native lingo.
** I think that most of the SUV's considered for this are probably NOT 4WD, it looks like a truck, rugged and ready to go(hence the marketing jargon, "Sport Utility Vehicle"), but it can barely get up the hill to the grocery store. I don't think your Four Wheel Drive is the same thing as our SUV. But I am a stickler for clarity.
As an environmental educator who has driven only small efficient cars for twenty plus years, I fully understand the need to conserve fuel AND THE PERILS OF GLOBAL WARMING. I need a car, and public transport does not fit my current professional and family needs. I also needed a car I felt safe in to reduce stress, and it was mini RAV4. Being 50plus, reducing stress is required...to preserve my IMPORTANT LIFE. I could NOT afford a hybrid in this style. I would have bought it if I could.
One day I thought I got a ticket.
To come down to my car and see a orange parking ticket is upsetting and stressful. When I read it and see it is from some group lecturing me on having an SUV, I want to kill.....feeling, not fact. They got a response, but I will put my two cents in here to you. This car will last me a long time....I drive less than ever. What I don't save in fuel I do in milage. I AM SEMI RETIRED. DO NOT LECTURE IN SUCH A NEGATIVE WAY. YOU LOSE SUPPORT.
1. Some official type definitions I found:
SUV - Mainly US - Abbreviation for: sports utility vehicle: a large car with an engine that supplies power to all four wheels, but that is usually used for ordinary driving
4WD - Abbreviation for: four-wheel drive: a vehicle that has power supplied by the engine to all four wheels so that it can travel easily over difficult ground
- The point that NEP were making was that (whatever you can them), vehicles providing extra grunt to all four wheels, yet are used mostly for street driving, are a global health hazard. And they would like to see them labelled as such.
2. I would agree that preaching does not always have the desired result. Yet often people, such as those you mentioned who ticketed your car, are simply frustrated that other forms of education were not effective. So they try something different. On the issue of feeling safe in a 4WD, recent studies by national motoring associations have shown that they are, in reality, less safe that standard sedans, in most accidents, except for head-on collisions (where their ability to afflict injury onto others is quite lethal.) Certainly driving less is always a step in the right direction.
Regina,
"I also needed a car I felt safe in to reduce stress, and it was mini RAV4."
That's the exact type of logic that must change. Granted, you only acquired a mini RAV4, but legions of others apply the same logic to purchase larger behemoths, leading me to wonder - how does that make me feel safe while I'm striving to be a conscientious citizen noodling around in my subcompact.
Your pursuit of perceived safety has done nothing but comprimise mine.
Great! You reduced your stress AND INCREASED EVERYBODY ELSE'S. Sure, now you're safer on the road, but at the expense of those people who are afraid you'll hit them.
If everyone followed your logic, they'd all be driving Hummers.