Off-roaders must be taken off our roads
RONAN McGREEVY looks at the preponderance of gas-guzzling SUVs
on Irish roads and bemoans our failure to recognise the
dangers to the environment and our own safety.
IT IS a sight all too familiar on British roads and now they
are polluting and clogging up the roads of Ireland.
It seems to be a given that the leafier the suburb and the
smoother the road surface the more likely it is to be
populated by the kind of off-roaders which used to be the
sole preserve of big farmers and mountain rescue teams.
Now these monsters are everywhere. Sports utility vehicles
(SUVs) are becoming a symbol of everything that is wasteful
and excessive about the Celtic Tiger.
They are also a serious danger to other road-users. During
the Christmas period I was driving down from the North of
Ireland on a narrow country road without a verge. It was
dark and raining.
Behind me, an SUV kept flashing at me to pull over. Had I
done so, I wouldn’t be writing this. I would probably be
dead or at least seriously injured.
SUV drivers have no monopoly on selfish, inconsiderate
behaviour, but there seems to be a preponderance of them who
think the roads were designed just for their leisure.
Owning or driving an SUV is in itself a selfish,
inconsiderate act. Deep down, SUV drivers think they are
better than the rest of us. Why else would they drive a huge
gas-guzzling, road-hogging, show-off monstrosity totally
unsuited to their needs?
The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone spoke for the majority
of non-SUV owners when he called 4x4 drivers “complete
idiots”.
They are worse than that. SUV drivers clog up the roads, are
a danger to others and pollute the atmosphere.
The Sierra Club, one of America’s largest environmental
organisations, has found that the average SUV spews out 43
per cent more global-warming pollution and 47 per cent more
air pollution than an average car.
SUV drivers think the environment has nothing to do with
them. It is such a massive, global issue and the forecasts
of climate change so uncertain and so far into the never,
never that it is tempting to think it is everybody else’s
problem.
After all, what difference does it make if little, old me
drives a top of the range Ford Excursion (12 miles per
gallon) when factories all over the developing world are
spewing out tonnes of toxic waste and the US, which accounts
for a quarter of all pollution, ignores international
treaties on climate control?
The trouble is that if everybody holds that attitude you
will end up with the kind of collective denial that exists
in the US.
Even if people are bored with all the talk and bewildered by
all the arguments over global warming, they cannot but fail
to notice the oil crisis during the summer that forced the
price at the pumps toward £1 a litre.
Forecasts about the world’s known oil reserves range from 25
years to 80 years, but one thing is certain — oil is a
finite resource. It will run out.
It is a frightening thought to imagine a world without oil
when our whole industrial civilisation depends on it.
The way things are going future generations will look back
at our one and curse our short-sightedness and selfishness.
There are more pressing immediate reasons why SUVs have
become socially unacceptable — they are a danger to other
road-users. A study carried out by two scientists at Trinity
College, Dublin last year revealed that pedestrians are
twice as likely to be killed or injured if struck by an SUV
because the bonnet is so much higher up. A normal car will
hit a passenger below the waist, an SUV is more likely to
hit a vital organ.
For a long time, the argument advanced by SUV drivers is
that they provide a safe environment for themselves and
their children.
But that safety is at the expense of everyone else’s — to
hell with you Jack, I’m alright. Now, though, even that
argument has been demolished by new research coming from the
US.
The research looked at 4,000 road accidents involving
children over three years.
It found that while children are protected by the sheer size
of an SUV, that is more than offset by the doubled risk of
roll-overs which occur when an SUV is in collision with
another vehicle.
Children are three times more likely to be injured in
accidents that involve a roll-over.
This ought to give SUV drivers pause for thought. There are
signs that is beginning to happen.
In the US, sales have collapsed since oil prices reached $3
a gallon last summer. Such prices would be a motoring
nirvana in Britain but in the US, where cheap petrol is an
article of faith, it is regarded as a catastrophe.
As a result, sales of the Ford Explorer, the best-selling
SUV in the US, dropped by almost two thirds.
There are signs too that such a slowdown is happening on
this side of the Atlantic.
After British sales of 4x4s doubled in the past decade to
just under 180,000 vehicles in 2004, they started to fall.
In Ireland, though, sales of SUVs rose by 41 per cent last
year, proving that the lessons that have been learned in
other countries have been lost on Irish road users.
As usual, the biggest growth market is in the places that
need them least — the leafy suburbs of south Dublin.
French environmentalists have taken to letting the air out
of the tyres of SUVs. In Britain, they do things more
politely.
The Alliance Against Urban 4x4s has been handing out
leaflets resembling parking tickets at school gates to SUV
drivers — reminding them of their poor choice of vehicle.
The Alliance wants to make driving SUVs as socially
unacceptable as drink driving.
Right now SUVs are a mark of status. Drivers think their
vehicle reflects their status and wealth when in reality it
is a measure of their vanity, selfishness and stupidity.
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