Re:People have no bloody idea about saving energy
by MichaelSalib on Wednesday August 18, 2010 @04:54PM
(#1615554)
But it's also true that it's people like her that are the reason for behemoth SUVs.
You have some interesting speculation here but no evidence at all.
Growing up my family had a station wagon and a regular sedan. They had comparable gas mileage IIRC. I think station wagons were driven out of the market (heh) in part because people felt safer and more powerful in SUVs and when you're driving your family around, safety matters. I certainly knew a lot of people who got SUVs for hauling the family around specifically because the high altitude made them feel invincible and they assumed that the extra weight would help in crashes against smaller vehicles.
Re:People have no bloody idea about saving energy
by Locke1689 on Thursday August 19, 2010 @03:50AM
(#1616772)
For whatever it's worth, I have an anecdote regarding safety in station wagons vs. SUVs. When I was young my little sister was almost killed in a car accident because she was in the back seat of a station wagon when they were rear-ended by an SUV. SUVs don't have the same bumper level that other cars do, so instead of impacting the designed crumple zone, the SUV rolled up into the back window of the station wagon. Another foot and she would have been decapitated.
Subsequently, I've seen a couple sources which corroborate this trend -- in high speed accidents between cars and SUVs the fatality rates where higher than two cars.
That's partly true. But it's also true that it's people like her that are the reason for behemoth SUVs.
Back in the 70's such folk agitated for the CAFE regulations governing fleet fuel efficiency. It's important to note that these standards applied to passenger cars, as they quite clearly cannot be applied to 18-wheelers.
We got cars of greater efficiency, and one of the changes that led to this was the demise of large family station wagons. However, the consumers still wanted a way to drag around their families. This led to the evolution of the minivan, and eventually to the SUV.
While I don't have nearly enough data to know whether the net effect was positive, it's clear that at least at the margin, the effect of the CAFE regulations was negative.
You can't fool the market. It always finds a way to route around obstacles.