Love My S.U.V.
Written by Ben Boyang
We Australians just love our Great Hulking S.U.V.s
We buy more and more of them every day, while everyone else in the world is buying less and less. So our emissions are going up while everyone else’s are going down.* This is partly due to the fact that almost all other developed nations have emission limits on vehicle. Australia and Russia do not. (but we will in January next year)
But there are also complex psychological reasons why we are addicted to these behemoths. Australia is fast becoming a nation of ‘cashed up bogans.’ We are the biggest people in the world by girth. We live in the biggest houses and drive around our sprawling suburbs in the in the largest vehicles we can fit on the road. Telling the world, loud and clear, that we are here! Ironically enough, we are said to be the most urban nation on the planet. Ironic because we don’t huddle together due to a lack of available real estate, more for a sense of security. We love our big, sprawling cities. They just keep on growing, and our country towns keep shrinking. Yet deep down in our psyche we still like to feel we are living in ‘the great outdoors,’ rugged individualists running cattle stations the size of England, or catching crocodiles with our bare hands, taming the wild, being real. When in reality we are a nation of dweebes, stuck in the office all day, day dreaming of a life of adventure. Luckily for us, some very savvy marketeers have come to our rescue. They have taught us how to connect with our alter egos via the type of motor vehicles we drive. Just hop behind the wheel of a great hulking S.U.V. and you become transformed from a humble office worker into the great hulking master of nature that you always knew you were, deep down inside. (‘a real Aussie’ according to Toyota, and they should know, they are the ones crafting and molding and nurturing our national identity)
Another significant reason we are so besotted with our great hulking S.U.V.s is that we feel safe when we are ridding in them. Safe from all the worries of the world, including ironically enough, safe from our very deeply held fear of climate collapse. But on a more mundane level, safe from being maimed or killed in a car crash. That is why we feel the need to drive our precious loved ones to school in a great hulking S.U.V., never mind that it puts all other road users at a greater risk. Never mind that our exhaust pipe pumps out deadly carbon monoxide at the same level as our school children’s mouths. Never mind that we are creating the conditions for immeasurable suffering for our loved ones after we are dead and rotting in our graves. Never mind, never mind….
The Australian Automobile Association has found that the road death toll is inflated by more than 5% purely from people choosing to buy four-wheel drive utes and large SUVs, despite not needing their power or size for the routes they drive.
According to Prof Stuart Newstead of Monash University’s Accident Research Centre, large SUVs increased the risk of serious injury to other road users by about a third more than medium-sized SUVs.
The Journal of Safety research has found that children involved in a fatal crash are eight times more likely to have been struck by an SUV than a standard car.
It gets worse. Studies have also shown that when we get behind the wheel of an S.U.V. we tend to have a false sense of security.(well, that seems obvious, doesn’t it?) We tend to get a bit more careless on the roads, knowing that if an accident happens, it is other people that are more likely to die. So we tend to break the speed limit a bit more than your average driver, and we don’t concentrate as much, we take more risks. As a consequence, SUV drivers tend to have more crashes, crashes where other people get hurt, and they come out unscathed, thus creating a positive feedback loop for negative behaviour. **
So to sum up, S.U.V.s cause more accidents, with worse consequences,
and they are a significant contributor to climate collapse.
To put it bluntly, they are ruining the long term future for the children we are trying to protect in the short term.
The average twin cab ute burns around 8lts per 100km, while a small family car burns about half that. Making S.U.V.s twice as bad.
*
** Love of big cars putting lives at risk
Ben Boyang 25/2/2024
Ben's Blog 
Yes, I’ve always wondered why people need an enormous SUV to go and do the shopping for a 4-person household
I think it makes them feel safe from threats they don’t consciously recognize, like climate collapse, ironically. I think folks vote conservative for the same reason. They feel unsafe, and so they feel their wealth will protect them, so they ote for a party that promises to protect their wealth.