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Are Hummer Owners Idiots?
More delightful proof positive that most SUVs are, in fact, morally repugnant. Go, America!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, January 15, 2003

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Just in time for America's latest murderous war for oil, just in time to be reminded of exactly why our foreign policy is so horribly mangled and debilitating and Saudi enslaved and terrorist ready ...

Just in time to crush a few thousand smaller cars and kill a bunch of pedestrians and poison the environment and still be able to traverse six feet of standing floodwater in order to make it in time for Timmy's soccer game, it's the rollout of the new Hummer H2, the biggest joke of the entire SUV world, representing, well, just exactly everything that's wrong with America's view of the world.

Oh come now. You know it's true. You've seen the magazine ads and you've ogled the billboards and maybe sat there sort of benumbed and sad as you witnessed the noxious TV commercials that show the Hummer proudly spanking the soul of humanity and necessity and subtle intelligence. Grunt and drive, baby.

Perhaps you have felt, like millions of others, your very anima spasm in pain when one of these absurd tanks rumbled by you in the street, making children cry and beautiful women roll their eyes in disgust and most everyone else realize, Jesus with a Mini Cooper, hasn't the inane SUV thing gone far enough?

Isn't there enough evidence of these land tanks' utter uselessness and danger and cultural detriment? How much proof do we need? And aren't we ready for some sort of momentous change?

Think about it. The past few decades have seen dramatic revolutions in every other technological realm, from PCs to the Internet to medicine, from DVDs to cell phones to deep-space telescopes, from "smart" refrigerators and PDAs and MP3 players to glow-in-the-dark vibrators that can run off the power in your phone line during those particularly naughty blackouts.

So why not the car? Why, then, has there been absolutely zero significant revolution in automobile-engine technology in the past 50 years? And can this be connected to the ridiculous upsurge in sales of the false-macho, faux-rugged, increasingly deadly SUV? Shall we tender a guess?

Of course it's because of the oil and auto industries. It is not even a question. Of course it's because of the titanic truckloads of cash to be made by continuing to exploit the world's oil reserves, brokering obscene deals and destroying land and earning our nation phenomenal levels of hatred, going so far as to prepare to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to protect those reserves.

And the SUV, simply put, is the poster child for America's incessantly voracious oil appetite. This is why ShrubCo has aggressively thwarted the development of alternative fuels, killed legislation that would've mandated both tougher fuel requirements and the development of zero-emissions technology. Just ask Dubya Sr.: Oil does a rich, paranoid ruling class good.

It matters not, of course, that the piles of evidence stacking up against the SUV increasingly prove not only that it is the most abusive, oil-dependent, terrorist-supporting death beast on the road today (as Arianna's Detroit Project ad campaign so delightfully points out) but also that SUVs are owned, by and large (but not, of course, exclusively), by complete jackasses.

You know it's true. SUV drivers tend, more than any others on the road, to be aggressive jerks. And New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher's new book, "High and Mighty: SUVs -- The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way," proves it.

As reported in a superlative Washington Monthly article that quotes extensively from Bradsher's book, SUV owners tend to be, in part, more selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, insecure and vain than their car-driving brethren. Oh yes they do. And the research backs it up.

They are frequently "nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic and less social than most Americans are."

Oh but it doesn't stop there. Only a small fraction of SUVs are ever used for actual work, or for their off-road capabilities, or by people who actually need them for inclement weather or for their hauling utility. And SUVs are, as Bradsher points out, intentionally designed to appear more reptilian and threatening, in an attempt to instill a false sense of ruggedness and menace and a get-outta-my-way machismo. And, of course, they succeed. Sort of.

Furthermore, SUVs are marketed, and widely accepted, as more safe, more solid and protective, which is of course one of the industry's biggest and most contemptible lies.

In truth, SUVs kill a great many more passengers than they save. They crush other cars, and study after study proves they themselves have shockingly high fatal rollover rates and lethal side-impact dangers. And, given the horrible visibility from SUVs, their drivers have a rather unfortunate habit of running over their own children in the driveway. True.

This, combined with how their false sense of ruggedness encourages their owners to drive them like maniacs, makes for one of the biggest and most dangerous mass delusions in modern American culture.

In fact, the "kill rate" for SUVs is truly appalling. To paraphrase the Washington Monthly article, for every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. And research has proved that a tank like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord kills only 21 per 1 million such vehicles.

In other words, SUVs aren't the slightest bit safe for you, or your children or other drivers -- especially other drivers. And to own an SUV, Bradsher asserts, essentially places the driver's own ego above the health and safety of those around him, not to mention the health of the environment.

Oh hell, it's tempting to quote the entire article, and the book, and you should just go click it right now and read the whole piece, because it really is truly appalling and sad and horrifying and really does go a long way toward answering that age-old question, Why do so many SUV drivers seem to be such jerks?

Which brings us, naturally, right back to the Hummer. The King Kong of SUVs, the biggest, most thuggish, most gluttonous, most utterly useless, cartoonish, silly, ultimately deadly civilian vehicle on the road today. Exactly three people in the entire nation actually need one, and they're all running guns and delivering copies of Honcho to ultraparanoid militias in remote Montana.

Perhaps it is worth noting, in this time of imminent, useless war, when our country is being run by, essentially, a failed Texas oilman, that it might be about time to rethink our all-American, bigger-is-better, screw-the-environment, high-fivin', the-world-is-our-prison-bitch mentality.

Perhaps this is the ultimate reminder the Hummer makes so explicitly clear. Perhaps this is why the SUV itself is such the ideal ethical lightning rod in today's global climate.

For in truth, it is exactly the mentality that gave birth to the SUV and the Hummer in the first place -- the weak ego, the need to strut a phony toughness, the insecurity, the patriotic narcissism, the false sense that all is solid and protected and that we care for no one but ourselves -- that has turned us into what we are today.

Which is to say, the world's bully, the preemptive superpower aggressor, the Great Antagonist, the most openly reviled nation on the planet, equal parts loathed and bitterly envied and grudgingly feared and desperately in need of a long, deep sociopolitical colonic -- to say nothing of a nice bicycle.

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Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.