🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 14:46:32 -0500, Carey Gregory <nospam@gw-dash-tech.com> 
wrote:
>hillman@enteract.com (David Hillman) wrote:
>>   Also, you don't need to sit up higher to look ahead.  Any vehicle that
>>   is so wide you can't see around it will likely be so tall you couldn't
>>   see around it either.
>
>Simply untrue.  I drive SUV's and sedans, and the visibility
>difference is tremendous.

Not quite sure what you're talking about. Visibility problems are
generally weather related, not height related. You are also ignoring
the fact that many SUV's have serious visibility problems to their
rear -- in many SUV's, you cannot see cars that are behind you because
the tailgate is so high (and in some cases, is obstructed by the spare
tire mounted on the back of the car), and thus it is easy to back up
and crunch into the poor slob in the Honda Civic behind you (the poor
slob you didn't see because he was in the blind spot beneath your
tailgate). Or, worst yet, you back up over a half-grown kid because his head
is beneath that tailgate. Had a guy back over a 10 year old kid who was
roller-skating in the driveway recently here in Phoenix, just didn't see
the kid because the tailgate in his SUV was so high. Opened the garage door,
looked out his mirror, saw nothing there, backed up... crunch. 

>>   Very, very little advantage is conveyed by a higher seating position.
>
>Care to support that assertion?

Not really. Why should I, when you didn't give me any data to support *YOUR*
assertation? I've had "deer encounters" in both a low-slung car and in a
tall truck. In neither case did I get advanced warning that a deer was
about to crash out of the underbrush onto the road. The only difference is
that I avoided the accident in my Ford Aspire, and went flippity-flip in
my Ford Ranger. 

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