🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 12 Jan 2001 18:59:26 GMT, dmcdd@my-deja.com <dmcdd@my-deja.com> wrote:
>A higher seating position puts my eyeline above the roof of most small
>cars. Your low car eyeline puts you even with most small cars. Since the
>majority of city traffic is still cars, that puts those in a higher
>seating position in the advantageous position of being able to see
>farther ahead in traffic an anticipate situations before the car
>immediatly ahead of them has to hit the brakes. That is a very large
>advantage.

Which is cancelled out by a) the inability to see cars behind you
due to the tall lift-gate (and often spare tire) blocking your rear
vision, and b) huge blind spots on the sides caused by you being unable
to see low enough to see cars beside you.

It's also harder to park with a tall vehicle because the tall nose blocks
your view of low obstacles in front of you. You must guesstimate to a much
larger extent than in a car. Makes it much easier to crunch the car in front
of you in a parallel parking situation. (We already know about the rear
visibility problem in a parallel parking situation).

Note that I'm not saying that SUV's are bad or evil or anything. I
just am saying that only a moron thinks they have a visiblity
advantage, because the visibility DIS-advantages cancel them out
(especially the rear vision one -- one reason I did not buy an Isuzu
Rodeo Sport was because I just flat couldn't see what was behind me).

Buy an SUV because you need the room, or the cargo capacity, or the
offroad capability, or the towing capability, or any of the other real
practical reasons to buy one. You don't have to invent imaginary
reasons. It irritates me that people do that, because it allows
everybody else to shake their heads and say "man, those 4x4 drivers,
you know they're all nutcases in denial" or "man, those 4x4 drivers,
they're such idiots they don't even know simple high school
physics". Folks who try to deny the disadvantages of SUV's are setting
up all 4x4 drivers to be viewed as the automotive equivalent of George
W. Bush (congenial morons, at best).

-- 
Eric Lee Green     Linux Subversives
eric@badtux.org    http://www.badtux.org