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Everyone knows that when it comes to cars, Americans are crazy. Not only do
we drive on the parkway and park in the driveway . . . but we have to have the
biggest and ugliest cars as well. There is nothing rational about the way Americans
select and drive their cars.
The latest fad in automobiles here in the U. S. involves large gas-guzzling
ugly stationwagons which tip over far too easily. Of course, you wouldn't call
them "big ugly stationwagons" if you wanted to sell many of them. The
car companies call them SUV's. The absurdity of driving one of these big brutes
during a time of rising fuel prices hardly needs to be spelled out.
The height of this obvious dysfunction, I observed on a recent trip to the comic
shop. A local limousine company had made a stretch limo out of a Chevrolet Suburban.
For those who live elsewhere let me explain: this is one of the largest mass-produced
passenger vehicles manufactured for the consumer market. My thought when I saw it was,
"What's the matter - wasn't it big enough?" Only an American would have
thought of this one.
Nor does the recent contretemps between Ford Motor Company and Firestone seem
to have dampened people's desire to own one. Although there seems to be more than
enough blame to go around, these two cannot even stand together against their
critics. They each seem to have a corporate death wish. Firestone claims that Ford
knew they had a problem for years and did nothing about it. Ford says the same about
Firestone. The more people killed, the more of these things people buy. None of
this makes the least amount of sense.
Then, too, most of the folk who drive these things show an appalling lack of
common sense in the manner in which they handle them on the road. Last year, one
almost ran over me as it was leaving the car lot. The sticker was still on the
window. Recently, one of the larger ones barely escaped rolling over on the freeway
directly in front of my car. It was tilted over so far that only two wheels were
touching the roadway. Even though they are essentially large trucks, most folks
try to drive them as if they were sports cars.
Even worse are the drivers who not only don't know how to drive these things,
but insist on doing other things while driving. One young woman who works in
my office building cannot even back out of her parking place without having a
wireless phone glued to her ear. The more expensive models have a TV-like screen
in the dashboard so the driver can take their eyes off the road to look at some
gizmo which shows them which road to take. Need tickets to the baseball game?
Just push a button and talk to someone about it while you're scooting down the
freeway at eighty miles an hour (about 125 kph)! The screen will show you where
your seats are. If you prefer, you can add a DVD player, so you can watch movies.
Don't take my word for it . . . just check out the advertisements.
Back in the old days, Ralph Nader railed against the lowly Corvair. Apparently,
he's too busy these days to notice the latest wave of carnage caused by these
behemoths. One can only hope that the price of gasoline will climb so high that
most Americans will leave the things at home.
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