Three dimensional moving objects

When I was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960’s, every “mom” (but not mine) seemed to have a station wagon, a long vehicle with an elongated open trunk. The reason was quite obvious: due to the baby boom and carpooling, everybody needed a car in which you could throw four kids, 2 bicycles and a dog in or put some 20 paper grocery bags. Dad’s fancy car was clearly not relevant nor did anybody worry about the price of gas. Alas, OPEC and the end of the baby boom killed off the station wagon.

In Israel, the vehicle of conveyance was the Subaru station wagon, occasionally still seen in some Arab vehicles. While it was true that if you merely gave the car a dirty look, you would create a dent in the metal, the material was so thin, it served the same purpose for many a family.  It was mechanically reliable, not too expensive and very practical.  It met the need for a family vehicle.

Today, the people mover of choice is the SUV, a squarish, jeep-like vehicle with a high center of gravity.  From Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, everybody and their cousin seems to own one or want to own them. They come in all sizes and types, from mini-SUV to massive Hummers, from diesel to hybrid. Even Mercedes Benz has a version. They are filling up the roads and parking lots of the world.

On the one hand, I can understand their popularity.  People still have kids, bicycles and dogs to transport.  Families do not eat any or travel less.  They are safer than a standard car due to their higher vantage point and greater weight. I imagine some of the them are quite comfortable.

Still, I dispise them both in theory and practice. They create a lot of pollution, except for the hybrid version possibly. They also create the ability to go off road, irresistible to some people. I love nature as it is, not with 4 by 4 tracks stamped on it.  The biggest problem is their dimensions.  They are higher than standard vehicles, giving the driver the feeling of confidence and encouraging aggressive behavior on the road. They are wider than other vehicles, paradoxically creating uncertainty in regards to lane position.  That means that they frequently are on or beyond the dividing line. They are also in many cases longer.  The practical effect is that parking lots, many of which were planned before the era of SUV’s, pose a challenge to them.  Even in more recently planned parking lots, too many drivers have no sense where the nose of the car is and park half a meter, 1.5 feet for North Americans, from the edge, causing the car’s ass to stick out in the traffic lane.  In the worst case, the driver takes no chances and uses two parking places, the great faut pas of modern city social etiquette. 

I may one day have to eat crow and buy one but still, to paraphrase Dr. Seuss, I do not like SUV’s, Sam-I-am.