On 2005-02-21, Theo Bekkers wrote:
I don't quite get the 'pointless poluting status symbols' bit. Could
some-one please explain to me why my wife's 2.0 litre RAV4 consuming 10
litres /100 km is antisocial, yet my daughter in law's 5.7 litre Commodore
Wagon consuming who knows what is socially acceptable. There are many all
Wheel drive vehicles out there which are shorter, lighter, and consume less
fuel than the average Falcodore.

From my point of view, the issue is one of visibility. Assume for the
sake of discussion that I'm driving around town in my two litre Holden
Vectra sedan. I like to be able to see what's happening ahead of me.
Depending on how much I'm focusing on my driving, I'm watching between 1
and 5 or 6 cars in front of me, so I can react to things well in front
of me before they propagate back to me. This is an Extremely Useful
skill to cultivate, because it means if there's a multi-car bingle up
ahead, you have that much more time to react and possibly avoid becoming
a part of it.

If I'm stuck behind something that has a 4WD form factor -- such as a
RAV4 -- then I can only react to what the RAV4 does. I am relying upon
the driver of the RAV4 having good reflexes and anticipating what the
traffic ahead is doing, because I am blind -- the RAV4 is blocking my
vision of what I like to see happening ahead.

You can argue that I should leave an adequate braking distance, and I
try to do that. However, when you're on the freeway in peak hour traffic
(but flowing smoothly), trying to leave a two to three second gap is
basically inviting the morons in the next lane over to jump in to try to
shave a millisecond off their transit time. This leads to me slowing
down even further to try to maintain the gap, and more and more people
jumping into the gap, rending the whole damn thing a useless exercise.

So to be completely fair, half the problem is the shape and size of the
vehicle blocking my view; the other half is people not understanding the
physics of driving and assuming that they can stop at the drop of a hat.
It Ain't So, and I need to drive to cater for people not understanding
that It Ain't So. Having a hulking great big four wheel drive in front
of me precludes that.

So it's not so much the polluting part as it is the safety part, at
least for me.

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