Hi George,
At 03:41 AM 1/14/2003 +0000, you wrote: >Hakan, > >I agree with you on some points of your letter to Sam and disagree >with you on others. Good. >I agree with you that SUV drivers are causing injuries >unnecessarily. I disagree we should take away the right for a person >to own a SUV. Any vehicle not familiar to the driver should >necessitate the driver receive training. I do not see where we disagree. Anyone should have the right to own it, but driving without education, no. >In my first SUV I >voluntarily participated in drivers training offered by Jeep and by >local 4wd clubs. I am surprised the lack of customer training has >not yet reached the courts via liable suits. In the area in which I >coach if injuries were occurring like this; the equipment would not >be blamed. The lack of responsible education would be and rightly >so. It is "now" publicly known that SUV's must be driven >differently than a zippy small car and the manufactures previously >have failed to properly prepare their customers to that fact. I >feel this problem exist with sporty cars and motorcycles as well. Yes, but sporty cars is not possible and at least in Europe motorbikes does require a special licence. Sporty cars is mostly a question of under or over steering and horse power. A sporty car often have beneficial properties that help the driver to manage the car well, contrary to a SUV. I think that what you mean is the bad judgement that some drivers of sporty cars show and that is more of the kind of people that are attracted by them, but most of them often show good judgement. >I disagree in that the problems of safety with SUV's lie SOLELY on >the SUV. Trucks/SUV's are really not much bigger than the past. >Mostly; as you stated, cars have gotten smaller. By the way these >days SUV's are mostly getting smaller again now too. . For example >the Jeep Liberty is replacing the Jeep Cherokee, Also the winner of >Petersons 4wd 4x4 of the year was a Lexus not the Hummer H2 or even >the new stock off road wonder the Jeep Rubicon. The biggest problem is that it is an off road vehicle design, with high wheel base and gravity point. You do not need many hours of off road training and experience to understand this. Anyone who did off road driving in them, must have had some scaring moments when he/she have been on the limits. Without these experiences, it is difficult to develop an understanding of the vehicle. Still a majority of SUV drivers today, does not have off road experiences. It is also the reduced view and other tings, the statistics do show a 22% rise in fatalities from collision with objects in the SUV group. >So who is to blame? NO ONE. Who is at fault? Manufacturers of both >small and large vehicles are somewhat. Who should be limited by >some governmental control? NO ONE, on this matter. Incentives need >to be created to encourage auto manufacturers to do drivers >training. Here we have a disagreement, because if you take your arguments further it would be voluntary to take a drivers license. I think that we can demand at least a light truck license for SUV drivers. >For example the accident rate of drivers who were use to >pumping brakes in slippery weather had a higher increase of auto >accidents after buying new cars with ABS brakes. Pumping was in many cases used in a inefficient way also and the best way was to drive as if you had a raw egg between your feet and the pedals. ABS was very good, since it minimized the effect of panic breaking and the loss of control following it. It does not help for too heavy foot on the throttle or precise steering. >They simply where >not trained that this once tried and true method was very >ineffective and unsafe with ABS brakes. Training would have avoided >much of this. > >Enjoying my SUV to visit some wondrous places of beauty. That is the right way to use SUVs and I like it too. >George Jessup >Recreation Director >ODG >PBB Forum moderator > > > > >Biofuels at Journey to Forever >http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html >Biofuel at WebConX >http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm >List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: >http://archive.nnytech.net/ >To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > >Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
