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Quote:
Originally posted by irseg
Haha, I like that!
I really don't care about the safety of anyone besides myself and the people I care about. If you decide to putt around in a 1500 pound Geo and it implodes when you cut off a Navigator and get creamed (I love how anti-SUV zealots pretend that only SUV drivers are idiots), it's your own damn fault. You risked safety to get gas mileage and cheapness in return; that was your call.
I guess we should ban 18 wheelers too, since they'd take out a big SUV just as easily as a Hyundai. 
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Nobody's talking about banning SUVs. I think what most of us who drive small cars, for whatever reasons, would really like is the following:
1. SUVs redesigned to be less deadly to smaller cars. They could easily have the bumpers lowered below windshield height for other cars. SUVs are not just dangerous to economy cars, but also to mid-sized family sedans and other "non-hippie" vehicles.
2. If SUVs got better gas mileage - which is ENTIRELY within the realm of engineering possibility without sacrificing safetly - more people would probably be willing to drive them. I'd have a hybrid or electric RAV4 in a heartbeat.
3. Those of us who choose more fuel-efficient cars often do so for environmental reasons. We are concerned about the long-term effects of air pollution on EVERYONE and are frustrated at the "memememe" attitude that has made fuel-inefficient and dangerous vehicles best-sellers, and damn the consequences to the rest of you and to future generations. We ban smoking in public places because of the health risks to others, yet we allow pollution-spewing vehicles to damage our air quality in the name of "consumer choice." It seems wrong to me, and in the end the only people it really benefits are the automakers who make HUGE profit margins on SUVs because 1. people are willing to pay for them, and 2. they are still exempt from fuel efficiency standards that apply to all other consumer cars.