mark a. wrote:There are many reasons why 4x4s and crossovers are popular, beyond looks. The height gives you:
- Easier to get your child in and out of baby seats
- Less bending over to put shopping into the boot
- Less bending and crouching for elderly getting in and out
- Bigger boot (sometimes)
- Views over hedgerows
- Often extra comfort (travelling sofa) and roominess inside
- Extra towing capacity for caravans etc
- Yes, extra capability that one time in 100 years that someone actually takes it off road.
It's a great list. Against that can I suggest:-
- Use vastly more resources to construct.
- Use vastly more resources to run and most are diesel whose particulate matter has been shown to cause many thousands of premature deaths a year and to worsen respiratory illness in hundreds of thousands.
- Are much more likely to kill both pedestrians and the occupants of other vehicles in collisions due to their extra mass and poor pedestrian safety.
- Aren't that great at protecting their occupants since they're more likely to roll in an accident.
- The 'great' views encourage the drivers to look further up the road with the result they're often not 'seeing' stuff directly in front. As a consequence they're involved in more rear end shunts. (Not sure if this is still true, but last time I checked it was).
- Their ability to go 'offroad' combined with mass means they're much less likely to be stopped by kerbs, garden walls and even house walls when they do crash.
- Making them drive like cars means people drive them like cars despite the fact that the physics says "no".
- A surprising number of people who drive them seem to think that 4 wheel drive also gives them magically stopping power on ice in an emergency.
Just thought I'd add all that to balance up the "benefits" although I can see it's a tough one...