What's wrong with SUVs?

["Cuadra" <cuadra@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nearly everything.

Several years ago I went out with a girl whose mother lived on a dead-end
road in the Santa Cruz mountains. The area was potmarked with dope farmers,
isolationists, and serial killers. Mrs. R had two wolfhounds, a teenage
daughter, and a 4WD Subaru. She needed reliable transport for the weekly
jaunt to Santa Cruz, and she frequently utilized the 4WD as mudslides and
other acts of God were common. 

Mrs. R could easily justify ownership of an SUV (if it worked as well as a
4WD Subaru). Ninety percent of Bay Area SUVs owner cannot. This recent
Digest thread has covered all angles of the SUVs vs sensible cars debate
(the 24-valve 164 is a sensible car) but allow me to reiterate the main
anti-SUV points -- SUVs burn more fossil fuels and emit more pollutants,
they clog roadways, they're more prone to injure and maim other drivers and
passengers, and the only real dirt these things ever see is the manicured
gravel on the road to the country club. Since the government, through
twisted algebraic formulas of cost, risk, value and ___ (fill in the
variable), assigns a tax to nearly everything, then it makes sense from a
bureaucratic p.o.v. to add a surcharge to SUV ownership.

As a motorcyclist I can't help worrying about these 4500 lb monstrosities.
Why, just the other day I was tailgated by a cell-phone yapping b---- in a
Land Rover. Fortunately I was able to shake her off after the first curve
appeared on the horizon (I think the 12 degree list of the Rover in that
turn caused cellular-phone static so she slowed down).

Paul cuadra@domain.elided
164 LS 5-speed (sans cell phone) and Moto Guzzi 1100i

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