SUV

Today Mark Morford at the SF Chronicle asks (rhetorically), do SUVs make you stupid? Well, based on the driving I observe, yes...

The conundrum I can't figure out: Here in Houston, we have lots of at-grade railroad crossings. This means that you have to drive over the tracks. It's a little bumpy - about the same as a medium-bad DC pothole.

What I can't figure out is why the people with the badass trucks and SUVs, the ones advertised with television commercials that show them driving straight up sheer cliffs in the Arctic, running down spotted owls and deer, crossing the Himalayas, etc., are the ones who come to a nearly dead stop to get over the 1-inch high train tracks, while those of us in normal cars mostly seem to be able to slow down, glance both ways in case there's a train coming because regulations of railroad safety has been downsized out of existence and the signal may be broken, and drive over the damn things at a reasonable speed.

All while the SUV drivers are moving at 1 mph over them whie chatting on the cell phone, changing the CD, watching a DVD, and running over a small child.

I realize that SUVs have their uses, but my casual observation around here suggests that SUV drivers are a lot more likely to drive erratically, speed up and slow down a lot, cut people off, and run red lights. Maybe it's the feeling of entitlement that comes with driving something larger than an African village?

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