Re: Good Intentions != Good Perceptions

Post #10,897 by wharris2 9/29/01 9:51:47 AM Reply	Re: Good Intentions != Good Perceptions SUV's have no practical use in big cities. They do have practical uses - they have more carrying capacity than a car trunk. With that said, I hate them. With a passion. I find myself in parking lots with two huge SUV's on each side, unable to see anywhere, trying to get out of my parking spot without being rammed by some other car that can't see me backing out. No fault of mine, no fault of theirs, but these huge goddamn SUV's just didn't provide any field of vision able for anyone to see anything. I wish some grocery stores and malls would wake up and provide special SUV parking areas, much like handicapped parking spaces. And tow away at a hefty fee the pisking yankers that disobey the parking rules. Who knows how empty the sky is In the place of a fallen tower. Who knows how quiet it is in the home Where a son has not returned. -- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
Post #10,915 by Ashton 9/29/01 2:24:42 PM Reply	You are too kind. Eco-disaster. 7300 POUNDS! for an Explorer - to carry around a 160# yuppie, dreaming of conquering the Andes (plowing through the delicate flora and fauna) enroute to stealing the left-eye of some heathen idol, and getting 70 virgins and 15 minutes on Tee Vee to flaunt it.. We ARE the stuff that dreams are made on. It's what we buy: marketers dreamstuff. We believe them! Only solution: crush 'em from orbit. It's the decent, the honorable - the Murican way of dealing with iffy questions. Ashton Moderate
Post #10,934 by Another Scott 9/29/01 5:01:36 PM Reply	Please get your masses right. It's annoying to see you keep repeating this: 7300 POUNDS! for an Explorer The curb weight of a 4 door XLS 2002 Explorer is 4334 pounds according to [link\|http://www.consumerguide.com/index.cfm?act=auto&main=detail&body=../autochannel/vehicledetail/spec25106style54996\|this]. It's gross vehicle weight rating is roughly 5360 pounds according to [link\|http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:18Ffu11QuqY:www.popsci.com/automotive/suv/data/ford_explorer_4-door.html+ford+explorer+gross+weight&hl=en\|this], about 1/2 ton difference (as you'd expect because they're basically built on a half-ton F-150 truck chassis). By contast, the Excursion weighs between 6650 and 7688 pounds, can carry up to 9200 pounds total (roughly 2000 pounds of cargo) or can tow up to 10,000 pounds according to [link\|http://www.ford-trucks.com/specs/2001_excursion_1.html\|this]. It's built on a heavier-duty (F350?) truck chassis. By contrast a 4 door [link\|http://www.hummer.com/H1/4dw/specperm.asp\|HUMMER] weighs up to 7646 pounds and carry up to 3700 pounds or tow up to 8300 pounds. If you're going to tar UAVs, please use the right brush. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #10,936 by Ashton 9/29/01 6:43:53 PM Reply	Re: Please get your masses right. Either I or a website may have confused an Excursion with an Explorer.. Somewhere was "73xx" but I don't even think about 'proof' of Everything (as if a link were immune from typos or creative editing, anyway). Unable to find a Boolean adequate to finding a list of Gross Wts for entire categories - so let's just damn the Excursion instead of the Explorer? (Though.. 'Explorer' has such familiar connotations of excess and duplicity, y'know?) Other incentives for excess: [link\|http://www.gesmallbusiness.com/magazine/1998_fall/f1998_hidde_auto_deduc.jsp\|The CPA mentality offers 2\ufffd] A lengthy effort at sorting out the cacophony. One could start another career just cataloguing peripheral considerations to the Point, nothing exceeds like excess: [link\|http://www.pageneralstore.com/busqueda/autow.htm\|Auto Week] Final Ramblings We are dealing with archaic vehicles. Ford and GM are enjoying a boom in the popularity of their large SUV category, examples of which are over thirty years old in their essential form, correct? These body-and-chassis machines are antiques no matter how much power, electronics and gizmos are placed in the things. I remember an interesting article a few years ago in The Atlantic Monthly, "Reinventing the Wheels," which illustrated how little auto corporations have innovated and how much potential exists for the improvement of the automobile. We have witnessed rapid evolution in the field of electronics, computers, even aircraft, but when it comes to cars, the companies continue to use an ancient process of stamped steel panels on body-and-frame vehicles or unibody/monocoques. This formula was exhausted long ago. Was it not a recent AutoWeek that made fun of the profusion of airbags in cars? Locating forty different airbags in a car is proof that it is time not to add more gizmos to the car, but to radically improve its performance and safety by changing its engine technology, materials, and manufacturing process. There is an efficiency craze in American and global business. Manufacturers, distributors, and retailers are constantly trying to devise quicker, more efficient, and less expensive systems. Yet our cars are produced with an incredibly inefficient, enormously expensive process involving steel panel stamping. The marketing geniuses have somehow made suburban families crazed for the same 1972 vehicle(Suburban) that took my team to soccer games: a crude truck that is only marginally better today, but whose profit margin is obscene. I would guess that my conversations on SUV's with other car enthusiasts have been the same as many of yours in the past two years. Frequent comments in those discussions include: - The observation that rarely, if ever, do owners of the large SUV's take advantage of the cargo capabilities or four wheel drive capabilities of the trucks. - That these vehicles are extravagant, even decadent, when used by urban and suburban soccer moms; a great deal of weight and power is being squandered on uses that other, more efficient(in the complete sense) vehicles could better serve. - That we have no objections to ranchers, farmers, business people, or cold weather state people using light trucks, but urban families in the New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia regions seem to be wasting resources and behaving like fashion suckers when they use a Tahoe or Expedition on a daily basis for routine transit. - That these SUV's are versatile, rugged, and practical IN THEORY, however, IN PRACTICE none of this matters, because the vast majority of the vehicles in this class do not go off road, rarely engage or need to engage the four wheel mode, and are in fact more difficult to maneuver in Center City, Philadelphia or small suburban towns in New York. - That, when we are being tailgated, cut-off, or crowded for no reason, we would prefer that the offending vehicle be a car or heavy car rather than a high, ultra-heavy light truck. - That the increased vision capability, the increased safety, and the theoretical versatility of light trucks are excellent attributes, but only in the minority of cases, when these attributes are necessary, would they justify the purchase of an SUV. Considering the overlapping categories - heavy vehicles intended to perform actual work / playtoys for the unimaginitive herd, seeking style: it's clear that everything from licensing/usage fees to insurance to 'national security' (!) posited on infinite imports from er Arab nations - are about up for grabs. (Soon as the Corps work out how to charge enough more - for vehicles cheaper to build) Ashton New embargo? My Kawa KZ-550 can beat 52 mpg. Even though it's an '81.
Post #11,075 by Silverlock 10/1/01 9:40:46 AM Reply	Your missing something Ash. I've never seen you mention the one reason most people I know have for buying/driving SUVs. Safety. These vehicles can withstand much more damage than passenger cars and the occupants are less likely to be injured in the event of collision. A close family friend explained it to me this way, "After that idiot plowed into my wifes car and sent her to the hospital for a month with 2 years of physical therapy after, I said to hell with fuel economy. She will never drive a small car again." So it's not all just vanity. Many people are making a reasoned, thought out choice to protect their loved ones with the most massive (and therefore the most protective of passengers) vehicle they can afford. For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong H. L. Mencken, Mencken's Metalaw
Post #11,077 by CRConrad 10/1/01 9:56:50 AM Reply	So are you and, above all, they. Here's the fallacy: GreyStreak tries to be silver-tongued: These vehicles can withstand much more damage than passenger cars and the occupants are less likely to be injured in the event of collision. These vehicles can also cause much more damage than passenger cars, and the occupants of the other vehicle (not to mention pedestrians) are much more likely to be injured in the event of collision with such a behemoth, than with a regular car. Many people are making a reasoned, thought out choice to protect their loved ones with the most massive (and therefore the most protective of passengers) vehicle they can afford. So, is their choice to, in the event of a collision, kill and maim others much more efectively than they could with an ordinary car also "a reasoned, thought out" decision (which would make it the moral equivalent of murder in the first degree), or just sheer devil-may-care thoughtlessness (murder in the second degree, or if you're lucky, manslaughter)? Either way, it's awfully egocentric, isn't it? For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong H. L. Mencken, Mencken's Metalaw How apropos... Albeit perhaps not in the way you thought. Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
Post #11,080 by Silverlock 10/1/01 10:19:11 AM Reply	Well, ..... of course. But I don't see how how you can consider it a "fallacy". Where is the flaw in the logic of "I want my family safe. In a collision, the occupants of the larger vehicle are safer. I will buy a large vehicle." Of course the occupants of a smaller car are more at risk. That is the point. They don't want their family at risk. They buy the larger vehicle. I doubt the possibility of smashing into a smaller car enters into the decision. I would guess they think something along the lines of-- I would never plow into anyone else. But if they hit me, I want the most steel between us I can get. Unreasonable, maybe. Thoughtless, ditto. Understandable, absolutly. For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong H. L. Mencken, Mencken's Metalaw
Post #11,555 by Ashton 10/3/01 4:35:25 PM Reply	Not missing it, nor do I argue with that narrow thesis But (as your sig underscores - and again by CRC) where does this simple-minded me-me-me::fuck you mindset end? Humm-Vees all around, with armor plate and 'cow catchers' on front, like other locomotives - 2 mpg? And isn't it postulated upon the same intentional insouciance of the '50s Murican behemoths? - those ridiculed at the time, via such as The Insolent Chariots - quite pre-Nader and Corvair mindlessness.. (The later refined Corvair, killed by hype - proved to be quite stable, considering the average hunk of Detroit iron it should reasonably be compared with.) Despite '73 and all the ObOb-lessons since: "I wanna save MY family and.. and.. Fuck Yours - and damn the cost in resources" -- is certainly indicative of the bizness ethic seen rampant all the way to 'prisons for profit'. Seems our national disease and, it shows. And the hidden costs? The solvents, waste generated in the energy-intensive processes within the making of EACH part of each car/'van'/tank creation - these are akin to the massive toxic contaminations in Si Valley / the exposures of Manpower Inc. min-wage, no-benefits slaves who work around the cyanides, chlorocarbons and other ugly materials: so today's 1 GHz Athlon can be tomorrow's kewl 2 GHz Gorgon -- and ten million more PCs can hit the landfill. Because .. the new, slower OS ... [we know all this shit]. ie it is by definition er short-sighted as are all new products ever launched without a slightest concern for the life-cycle, the disposal (Pampers anyone?) and the consequences overall. Like today: We MUST make nice noises about the fascist Saudi-Arabia regime - for our insatiable need to produce oversized, inefficient playtoys, which we can... (and do) rationalize as um 'safer': if it only wipes out some Other family but--- I'm OK. See anything wrong with this pattern? Ashton
Post #11,559 by pwhysall 10/3/01 4:41:33 PM Reply	SUV Safety SUVs are safe, as long as you hit something smaller than you. If you're broadsided by an 18-wheeler, the non-crumple, non-monocoque design of the vehicle will neatly transfer much of the energy of the crash to the soft squishy bits inside, i.e. you. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]

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