If we're going to try to "punish" SUV drivers for driving those vehicles, then I think we need to both recognize and do some things:
1) We need to recognize that there's a wide variety of vehicles in the SUV category. Many of them have replaced (not supplemented, replaced, because they sell better and car companies are hyperoptimizing their profits like everyone else) old standards like station wagons and minivans in manufacturer lineups. Most of them do not have the stupidly-high hoods that this article is actually about: those are primarily on pickup trucks.
2) We need to recognize that, at least for some SUVs, there are genuine, non-overcompensating use cases. Like driving on snowy, icy winter roads in the northern US and all of Canada.
3) Having recognized these things, we need to make sure there is provision in place for the people who have actual needs these vehicles are fulfilling—whether because they fall into the smaller category of people who would always need these things, or because they fall into the much larger category of people who would have bought a minivan or station wagon in the '80s and '90s, but most of those have gone away—before we start treating them all like the worst members of the category.
Full disclosure: I drive a Subaru Outback. I drive it for three main reasons: it's extremely reliable, it has amazing cargo capacity (which I do use regularly), and its AWD is a godsend on the roads in upstate NY in the winter. (Is it possible to drive on these roads without it? Absolutely; I drove a Toyota Corolla for over a decade. But I am much less stressed with the AWD.) I just bought my second one, after shopping around extensively to find something that would fulfill my requirements, but get better gas mileage (which, to be fair, the Outback's is actually shockingly good for an SUV).
The Outback is also basically the shape of a station wagon. It does not have an unhealthily high hood. I honestly don't know how its weight compares to other non-SUVs, but my understanding is that right now, the heaviest cars are electric cars, so using weight alone is also not a great metric.
Ultimately, I think what people like you need to do is consider this question: Are you actually trying to solve a real problem with what cars are on the road? Or are you just looking for a socially-acceptable group of people to bully and be mean to? Because your proposals sound a lot like they're aimed at the latter, and very little like they'd be effective at the former.
Suv style vehicles are actually a lot more dangerous in the snow. Its so much more mass you are dealing with and damage when you lose grip entirely on ice under gravity power alone. On video clips of this sedans and such might kind of bump against a parked car and come to a stop while the big Suburban goes on to total a parked car with all the kinetic energy. If you want a snow tank, get a car that weighs like ~2500lbs, put on actual snow tires, and keep the transmission in high gear to engine brake. It also helps to learn to brake traction and skid with control in a snowy empty parking lot.
I think people tolerate this feature of EVs largely because they are viewed as "green", unlike similarly-massive ICE vehicles.
Form factor also plays a role, which as the article here shows is not merely an aesthetic issue. A Model 3 is heavy but at least it has a low hood.
But you are probably right. Not only are they heavy, but, led by Tesla, EVs have put huge acceleration into the hands of untrained people, together with slightly-unfamiliar controls: Single-pedal interfaces without brake lights, touchscreens that don't clearly indicate when you're in reverse, etc. This combination is likely to cause fatalities.
Electric vehicles could provide fantastic local transportation, in the form of e-bikes, scooters, tuk-tuks, and small efficient vehicles like the Aptera. They could be cheaper than current ICE cars rather than (as they are) more expensive. But our infrastructure is not built for this -- probably trillions have been dumped into highways -- and they are incompatible with the current equilibrium on American roads, where large vehicles are a best response.
And fundamentally, the technology just doesn't permit the requisite ranges without large masses. And those ranges are required because of the way everything else has been built. So we're almost trapped by path dependence.
EVs are as you note terrible in the snow. For one they are heavy and its the same rubber compounds holding a heavy vs lighter car, so no matter what you need more friction than you have to stop. For two they are really powerful cars, I wouldn’t be surprised if people break traction easily. And for three your range depletes to a little over 100 miles. Untenable on mountain trips I take where I might go 50-75 miles between gas stations, far further still between superchargers.
> We need to recognize that, at least for some SUVs, there are genuine, non-overcompensating use cases.
For the things I think of as SUVs, I don't think there is any legitimate use case to be honest.
Big SUVs often have less interior room than a sedan or station wagon so interior room is not a use case. They have way less cargo capacity than a pickup so that's not a use case either. They fit less people than a van, so fail again. They are top-heavy and not nimble, another fail. I don't understand the point of SUVs.
I definitely would not support any kind of SUV ban simply because I don't believe in bans, to each their own, but just make a SUV-license require a lot more training which will discourage most soccer-moms/dads from wanting one.
You say Subaru Outback though. I would have never called that a SUV. It's a wagon. I do see the Subaru website calls it a SUV, which I find weird. I guess the definition of SUV has broadened to mean just about anything.
OTOH, perhaps thinking of the Subaru Outback as a SUV just shows you have let a couple of decades of SUV propaganda make up the definition of "SUV" you have in your head for you. It's not like it's anywhere near a Dodge Ram in looks and design, is it?
(OTGH, if it is, then maybe I'm mixing up the Outback with other Subaru models we have more of over here.)
> We have to work with the definitions of things that actually exist in the world, not the ones we make up in our heads.
Yes we should, ideally. The word station wagon has meant that form factor in a car for over a hundred years (apparently around 1910, from some light searching).
It's annoying that some marketing person suddently decided to call a station wagon a SUV now that SUV is the hip thing.
> Full disclosure: I drive a Subaru Outback. [...T]he Outback's [gas mileage] is actually shockingly good for an SUV).
Funny, I call the Outback an AWD station wagon, not an SUV at all. I've got no problem with that; I'd be much happier if people bought those. Indeed, the very existence of Subarus seems to make most SUVs unnecessary. The only SUV Subaru makes (that I am aware of) is the Forester (and while that's a little larger than my ideal, it's not gigantic).
> We need to recognize that there's a wide variety of vehicles in the SUV category.
If I were Supreme Ruler, I would permit the Honda CRV (SUV), Toyota RAV4 (SUV), and Ford Maverick (truck) to exist, but no larger (ignoring commercial vehicles). Also station wagons, and minivans up to the size of the Honda Odyssey.
(As I am not Supreme Ruler, I recognize that this has all the weight of a random opinion on the Internet.)
> Are you actually trying to solve a real problem with what cars are on the road? Or are you just looking for a socially-acceptable group of people to bully and be mean to?
Full disclosure: I walk everywhere, or else I take the bus -- and on the rare occasions that I rent or borrow a car, it's typically a small sedan. I react negatively to oversized vehicles (a) because I view them as a threat to my person, and (b) because I'm acutely aware of the arms-race dynamics here. People buy big SUVs because they "feel safer", i.e., in a crash, they are more likely to survive and kill the other driver, rather than the other way around. Recognizing the primal violence underlying this, I respond that the solution is more primal violence, to disincentivize this selfishness and arrest the arms race before it goes any further.
None of which, I will add, applies to the Subaru Outback, which I'm totally cool with.
Note that Subaru raised the Outback up higher some years ago specifically so it would qualify as a light truck some years ago. So while I agree that it's more station wagonny than most light trucks it actually legally qualifies as one. I remember because I actually wrote a cranky letter to Subaru US about it and they sent back a polite response saying "hey, incentives!" more or less.
> Funny, I call the Outback an AWD station wagon, not an SUV at all.
Then you're going to need to come up with some better way of defining what a Bad Vehicle is if you want to change policy/culture, because your definition of an SUV doesn't match with reality.
When you say something like "we need to make SUV drivers feel ridiculous and humiliated", but you're using a definition of "SUV" that you made up in your head, you're not communicating anything useful or productive to the world at large.
Easy: Bad Vehicles are over-heavy, fuel-guzzling, dangerous-to-others (body-on-frame, high bonnet, bull bars...) things that are sold as "trucks" or "SUVs" -- you know, the original trucks and SUVs, which definition many people who know shit about cars and trucks remember and still use. Most things that are sold as "trucks" or "SUVs" nowadays aren't necessarily Bad Vehicles, seeing how they're just station wagons on stilts with faux-macho design plastered over the outside. They only lean towards the Bad Vehicles side of things when that silly design goes too far towards dangerous-to-others (high square bonnets, shooting-slit visibility etc) in the name of faux-macho buyer appeal. Detach the bull bars from your Outback and you'll probably be OK.
We can probably make this more objective by aiming for lower hood heights and lower vehicle masses.
Or, crash tests, which currently privilege the driver and passengers, should also consider other road-users, like pedestrians, cyclists, and the drivers of other vehicles -- especially small ones.
Fair point though. It's merely a marketing term of the car industry to begin with.
Change regulations now, legislation usually works like "From [date a few years in the future], only vehicles with [list of proerties] will be allowed to be..." Manufacturers managed to switch to building only trucks and SUVs in a few years, so of course they can switch back in a few years too.
Also: Funny how people used to be able to get around in sedans and station wagons even in Canada and the northern states of the USA only a few decades ago, isn't it?
ETA: The Subaru Outback doesn't only look like a station wagon, AFAICT it pretty much is a station wagon. A 4WD station wagon, set slightly higher and with a somewhat boxier design to look "like a SUV" -- just like 98.4% of "crossovers" and "SUVs" sold nowadays. Get rid of the silly regulations that have many of them taxed like "trucks" (as if they were farm work vehicles in the 1950s) and allow some aspects of unsafe design (high square bonnets etc), and we'll probably see fashion too swing away from the current faux-macho bullbar aestethic after a while.
I won't recognize (2) because it's false. Any current - and past - fwd will work just fine in Canadian snowy and icy conditions. Sure if you drive a shitty propulsion car you will get stuck everywhere but those cars are the exception.
Edit: you acknowledged yourself that argument is mostly bs later in your comment...
FWD comes standard on the most popular SUVs sold in the US and Canada. I don't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if only a minority of SUVs here are AWD.
Decent points, but it's good to remember that all cars have AWS (all wheel stop) - if you're not careful have AWD can make it easier to miss the transition to where AWS is no longer sufficient. In the NW the main attraction of AWD is not getting stuck in ski area parking lots and not having to put on chains when the roads prematurely force chaining up "except for AWD" because the state patrol knows almost no one has snow tires. (And I've never gotten stuck with snows on my FWD Jetta, but have had to put on chains all too many times before I really needed to - which is enough of a pain that I'll probably get AWD on my next car.)
And trailheads around here also often are a lot easier to get to with a bit of extra ground clearance. So I may well give in and get an SUV for my next car. But the real driver (so to speak) will be that given the predominance of trucks on the road, not driving one yourself becomes a risk. (You can see the signal in the IIHS results.) So I'll be looking at how small I can go to meet my needs and minimize externalities, I suppose.
All of that said, the more threatening the roads look to potential bikers and walkers the fewer we'll get of them. And whether it's happiness, health or efficiency you're trying optimize, more of those are pretty clearly a win.
I've biked and walked American cities and country roads for over half a century, and while there have been many improvements over that period, the last five years have seen a series of what feel like steady reversals in the NW US. More and bigger trucks are part of a complex set of setbacks but feel like a key one to me. It doesn't take too many aggressive moves by monster trucks to make you wonder what you're doing out there.
If we want further progress, we'll have to figure out how to mitigate this problem.
> All of that said, the more threatening the roads look to potential bikers and walkers the fewer we'll get of them.
And while I agree that that's a big problem in some places....it's really a complete non-issue in most of the places I'm driving. No one's riding bikes or walking along US Route 20 in central NYS—not where there's 20 miles between small towns and a single hill climbs about 200 feet fairly steeply.
> Like driving on snowy, icy winter roads in the northern US and all of Canada.
No. Plenty of people get by with normal-sized cars under similar conditions in countries like Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Not to mention that SUVs are actually worse in such environments due to their almost-universal terrible performance in the Moose Test.
Did you miss the part where that's exactly the main problem with them that pretty much everyone else here is talking about, i.e. what this discussion is (mainly) about?
1) We need to recognize that there's a wide variety of vehicles in the SUV category. Many of them have replaced (not supplemented, replaced, because they sell better and car companies are hyperoptimizing their profits like everyone else) old standards like station wagons and minivans in manufacturer lineups. Most of them do not have the stupidly-high hoods that this article is actually about: those are primarily on pickup trucks.
2) We need to recognize that, at least for some SUVs, there are genuine, non-overcompensating use cases. Like driving on snowy, icy winter roads in the northern US and all of Canada.
3) Having recognized these things, we need to make sure there is provision in place for the people who have actual needs these vehicles are fulfilling—whether because they fall into the smaller category of people who would always need these things, or because they fall into the much larger category of people who would have bought a minivan or station wagon in the '80s and '90s, but most of those have gone away—before we start treating them all like the worst members of the category.
Full disclosure: I drive a Subaru Outback. I drive it for three main reasons: it's extremely reliable, it has amazing cargo capacity (which I do use regularly), and its AWD is a godsend on the roads in upstate NY in the winter. (Is it possible to drive on these roads without it? Absolutely; I drove a Toyota Corolla for over a decade. But I am much less stressed with the AWD.) I just bought my second one, after shopping around extensively to find something that would fulfill my requirements, but get better gas mileage (which, to be fair, the Outback's is actually shockingly good for an SUV).
The Outback is also basically the shape of a station wagon. It does not have an unhealthily high hood. I honestly don't know how its weight compares to other non-SUVs, but my understanding is that right now, the heaviest cars are electric cars, so using weight alone is also not a great metric.
Ultimately, I think what people like you need to do is consider this question: Are you actually trying to solve a real problem with what cars are on the road? Or are you just looking for a socially-acceptable group of people to bully and be mean to? Because your proposals sound a lot like they're aimed at the latter, and very little like they'd be effective at the former.