I was recently rear-ended by an SUV while stopped at a red light. Damage
was fairly minimal (about $500) and no injuries. The woman was clear about
two things: She never saw me and she did not feel the hit.
Anyway, here's a little rant floating around online that I thought you'd enjoy:
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If there's one thing this nation needs, it's bigger cars. That's why I'm
excited that Ford is coming out with a new mound o' metal that will offer
consumers even more total road-squatting mass than the current leader in
the humongous-car category, the popular Chevrolet Suburban Subdivision- the
first passenger automobile designed to be, right off the assembly line,
visible from the Moon.
I don't know what the new Ford will be called. Probably something like the
"Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure." In the TV commercials, it will be
shown splashing through rivers, charging up rocky mountainsides, swinging
on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through the surf and fighting giant
sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface - all the daredevil
things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, where nobody
ever drives on an actual road. In fact, the interstate highways in Sport
Utility Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are
teeming with deer, squirrels, birds and other wildlife species that have
fled from the forest to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton
vehicles barreling through the underbrush at 50 miles per hour.
In the real world, of course, nobody drives Sport Utility Vehicles in the
forest, because when you have paid upwards of $40,000 for a transportation
investment, the last thing you want is squirrels pooping on it. No, if you
want a practical "off-road" vehicle, you get yourself a 1973 American
Motors Gremlin, which combines the advantage of not being worth worrying
about with the advantage of being so ugly that poisonous snakes flee from
it in terror.
In the real world, what people mainly do with their Sport Utility Vehicles,
as far as I can tell, is try to maneuver them into and out of parking
spaces. I base this statement on my local supermarket, where many of the
upscale patrons drive Chevrolet Subdivisions. I've noticed that these
people often purchase just a couple of items - maybe a bottle of diet water
and a two-ounce package of low-fat dried carrot shreds - which they put
into the back of their Subdivisions, which have approximately the same
cargo capacity, in cubic feet, as Finland. This means there is plenty of
room left over back there in case, on the way home, these people decide to
pick up something else, such as a herd of bison. Then comes the scary part:
getting the Subdivision out of the parking space. This is a challenge,
because the driver apparently cannot, while sitting in the driver's seat,
see all the way to either end of the vehicle. I drive a compact car, and on
a number of occasions I have found myself trapped behind a Subdivision
backing directly toward me, its massive metal butt looming high over my
head, making me feel like a Tokyo pedestrian looking up at Godzilla. I've
tried honking my horn, but the Subdivision drivers can't hear me, because
they're always talking on cellular phones the size of Chiclets ("The Bigger
Your Car, The Smaller Your Phone," that is their motto). I don't know who
they're talking to. Maybe they're negotiating with their bison suppliers.
Or maybe they're trying to contact somebody in the same area code as the
rear ends of their cars, so they can find out what's going on back there.
All I know is, I'm thinking of carrying marine flares, so I can fire them
into the air as a warning to Subdivision drivers that they're about to run
me over. Although frankly I'm not sure they'd care if they did. A big
reason why they bought a Sport Utility Vehicle is "safety," in the sense
of, "you, personally, will be safe, although every now and then you may
have to clean the remains of other motorists out of your wheel wells."
Anyway, now we have the new Ford, which will be even larger than the
Subdivision, which I imagine means it will have separate decks for the
various classes of passengers, and possibly, way up in front by the hood
ornament, Leonardo DiCaprio showing Kate Winslet how to fly. I can't wait
until one of these babies wheels into my supermarket parking lot. Other
motorists and pedestrians will try to flee in terror, but they'll be sucked
in by the Ford's powerful gravitational field and become stuck to its
massive sides like so many refrigerator magnets. They won't be noticed,
however, by the Ford's driver, who will be busy whacking at the side of his
or her head, trying to dislodge his or her new cell phone, which is the
size of a single grain of rice and has fallen deep into his or her ear
canal.
And it will not stop there. This is America, darn it, and Chevrolet is not
about to just sit by and watch Ford walk away with the coveted title of
Least Sane Motor Vehicle. No, cars will keep getting bigger: I see a time,
not too far from now, when upscale suburbanites will haul their overdue
movies back to the video-rental store in full-size, 18-wheel
tractor-trailers with names like The Vagabond. It will be a proud time for
all Americans, a time for us to cheer for our country. We should cheer
loud, because we'll be hard to hear, inside the wheel wells.
Jeffrey H. Boatright, PhD
Senior Editor, Molecular Vision
http://www.molvis.org/molvis
Mailto:jboatri@emory.edu
404-778-4113
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