h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Precisely

Go ahead, Amy, rant all you want.

Parking lots full of SUV's are dangerous places,
because you can't see around them when you're
trying to pull out from a space.

Or walk out from between them.

That, too.

Gosho, you have to realize that the Metro is/was a tiny car. That 50 mpg it boasted was based on highway driving, not city driving. But highway driving implies much longer in the car to get the best mileage. I can't see this family scrunched up in one of those sardine cans for the 7 hour drive when we go to visit Lord Scott's mom. Then if she wanted to go shopping (she lives on a farm on top of a mountain, 15 minutes from the closest tiny little town), one of us would need to stay home, because as I recall, those were only 4 passenger cars, not 5.

The only way we'd be able to take Amy+ to college (the same 7 hours away, so we visit Grandma at the same time) if we owned one of those tiny cars, would be to rent a U-haul for all her stuff, which means we'd still need to either take another car to hold the extra people (or someone stay home), or rent a larger car with enough power to haul a U-haul trailer.

Back when when the girls were little, we occasionally owned somewhat smaller cars but we had to bring all the baby paraphenalia with us on every visit (grandma had none of the necessities available), so we actually looked into renting a larger car for the trip. The price was so exhorbitant that over the course of a couple of years of trips it was actually cheaper to just buy a larger car. If you considered only the price differential between buying a small car, and a car large enough to accomodate all the stuff we needed to take with us, the cost of renting just for trips would have been ridiculous. We ended up squashed in our little car a couple of times, but when the opportunity arose we got a larger one.

Our Intrepid gets about 30 mpg on a trip - not bad for it's size, really.

I appreciate that small cars aren't practical for everyone Lady Scott At the same time I don't think it's necessary for any car which uses a public road to have the kind of power and performance which is becoming common now. That kind of thing requires an engine which uses more petrol than the journey really needs. Even though there were only four of us in my family, my dad had a VW bus which could comfortably seat eight people, but which had an engine of only 1000cc. It couldn't go any faster than 70 mph, but it didn't need to - that's the speed limit.

Cars are being promoted now almost entirely on how fast and how powerful they are. The horsepower is often the first thing mentioned in the voiceover. 350hp for an SUV which will usually carry one person? I used to haul 3,500Kg of van and load with an engine which was rated at less than 100hp. It would cruise quite comfortably at 65mph, and although it slowed down on hills... well, why shouldn't it? I don't expect to be able to do the same speed going uphill as on the flat.

I also believe that cars are becoming faster and more powerful than human reactions can cope with.

One more thing which I became aware of during my time as a professional driver was the unfair advantage of increased performance. I remember being at a roundabout one day. It was a roundabout where a minor country road meets a main, dual carriageway (divided highway) trunk road. It took me forever to get out onto the roundabout from the side road because the cars entering the roundabout from the main road to my right could accelerate so quickly that I didn't get a chance to make my move.

And about the figures - the Metro was sold on being able to get over 50mpg, which no doubt would have been the highway mileage - always better than the urban figure. I'm sure that the manufacturers of the car I saw advertised yesterday were also using the best figures they could come up with, ie the highway mpg

Oh, I knew you understood that - it's just frustrating to me that just because we need a larger/less economical vehicle for one thing, we have to use it for *everything*.

And yes, the SUVs are getting ridiculously huge. Some of them are so big that they might as well be driving MAC trucks.

I can't believe that even most of the people who own one could possibly need all that power/size, ever. The 4-wheel drive would be nice sometimes though at least if the drivers can manage to remain sensible in bad driving conditions.