Two fun sites shared with me today:
They Rule is a really cool map/database of corporate interbreeding.
Bumper Mentality is an article Alan sent to an SUV owner/sympathizer who complained about the size of parking spots and saftey of non-suvs. Its basically a big F*ck-you SUV Drivers, but in a classy kind of way. You make us proud, Alan.
Amen to the Bumper Mentality article. Plus SUV’s support terrorism, according to new TV commercials rolled out by columnist Arianna Huffington.
You can listen to it at on NPR at http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=909864
Just thought that that was interesting. Although my car may support nuclear arms since its a Hyundai made in Korea (but I’m not sure if its north or south Korea)
Its South Korea.
Actually, if we started looking at the world this way, we’d all look like evil, greedy bastards. Its best if we stop thinking about what our consumer culture does. Stop it right now.
How are we evil and greedy for being concerned about what our money goes to support? Granted the SUV supports terrorism ad goes to far.
Ohh and the nuclear arms comment was meant to be a joke because I thought that it was funny that someone can make a such a broad correlation between SUV’s and Terrorism.
Maybe on a single person scale, but think of all the SUV, idling their engines…engines of ill-efficent terror!
Really though, we wouldn’t need to go to war if everyone drove with their tires inflated to spec.
http://www.cycloid.com/tireinflation.htm
This is what I’ve been talking about for three years now. I literally called SUVs “male minivans.” Everybody wants to complain about emissions and fuel economy of utes, but what good does that do? Consumers already know that they guzzle fuel and blow smoke before they buy them, but they buy them anyway. That’s because SUVs have never been marketed AS fuel efficient or clean. Nobody buys them for that reason. But people do reason to buy utes on the basis of “safety.” It’s nice to see that somebody is finally attacking the SUV in this area where it actually hurts. Nobody realizes that SUVs are more dangerous than any other car on the road. I think that as part of the punishment for crashing an SUV, one should be forced to take–and pass with a B–a class on Newtonian physics. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, big objects in motion tend to REALLY stay in motion. I’ve always found it insane that the bigger the truck people drive, the closer they follow to the person in front of them. I finally just concluded that less than five percent of this country’s population has ever taken a physics class (or were just busy at home flexing in the mirror and looking tough while physics class was scheduled). Everybody has this idiot notion that safety is all about how likely you are to survive a frontal impact and not how likely it is that that will happen.
Also, the part about side impact design is correct. To meet government standards, a vehicle’s occupants must experience less than a certain number of Gs in a 35 mph front end collision into a non-moving object. This is achieved by designing ride-down into the front end (bumpers, crumple zones, etc.). For side and rear impact, the chassis is built as rigidly as possible. The idea is that every car is totally solid on three sides and soft in the front. So if a car is t-boned, the side door of the hit car won’t bend (ideally) and the front of the hitting car will crumple and provide the ride-down. This is a good enough system for now, seeing hows we don’t want to drive cylindrical cars, but does leave a car open to the dangers mentioned in the article. Some cars have strong roll cages (why I’m alive to type this), but still most of the side impact resistance is in the door itself, making a collision with a tall vehicle a death sentence. It also means that these SUVs that are far more likely to slide off the road in a turn and take a tree to the side are screwed with no ride-down built into the doors. This is all why if I had the cash, I’d be all over an S6 Avant. Over.
Ok so the whole physics thing makes complete since and brings up a formadable issue. However you tell me how in the world you would rather be in a Honda Civic when I come through your trunk with my Tahoe. Then you can talk physics from your hospital bed…