| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
|
|
|
|
|
Counterpoints Driving Model T-Rex
Because 3,000 Americans died on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center, we’re at war with global terrorism. Yet almost every month, more than 3,000 Americans die in traffic crashes, and our long war on dangerous driving seems to have stalled. Starting in the late 1930s, traffic fatalities declined by half every 25 years, but in the last decade the kill rate leveled off at 41,000 per year. From having the fewest fatalities per thousand registered vehicles in the 1960s, the United States has slipped to number 13—behind Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Britain, Switzerland, Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Canada, Finland, and Luxembourg—and is still sinking. The United States’ long-term trend toward smaller, safer, and more fuel-efficient cars took a detour in 1969, when American Motors Corporation bought the rights to manufacture Jeeps from the Kaiser Corporation. Many Americans admired the Jeep’s military heritage, and liked the idea, if not the actuality, of using four-wheel drive to explore the great outdoors. The Jeep was so wildly successful that other automakers quickly took notice and began building the big, heavy, all-terrain automobiles known as sport utility vehicles (SUVs). When the U.S. imposed safety, environmental, and tax rules on autos in the 1970s, much tougher standards were set for cars than for pickup trucks, vans and off-road vehicles. Congress raised fuel efficiency standards for cars to 27.5 miles per gallon in 1985, but leveled off the light-truck standard at 20.5 mpg. This loophole gave automakers an enormous and unintended incentive to avoid the extra costs involved in manufacturing fuel efficient engines and to shift production toward heavily polluting SUVs. The standard remains at 27.5 mpg for cars, but the Hummer gets only 13 mpg, the Durango and Explorer 14. A mounting backlash against SUVs cites the endemic environment, safety, and rudeness problems. Their size gives them an image of safety, but the image is an illusion. Their high center of gravity makes them prone to roll over, killing and injuring occupants. They are also dangerous to other road users, smashing up cars that they hit and pulverizing pedestrians. Their “green” image is also a mirage, because they spew up to five times more smog than cars and add to global warming. Their gas-guzzling designs increase American dependency on imported oil. Recently the Earth Liberation Front torched a Ford dealership in Pennsylvania that specialized in SUVs, and a Hollywood group led by columnist Arianna Huffington aired TV ads that equated SUV driving with supporting terrorism. Yet SUV sales are stronger than ever. As reported recently by Julian Guthrie of the San Francisco Chronicle, General Motors sold more than 1.2 million of them last year, including a billion dollars’ worth of its latest rollout, the three-ton, all-terrain Hummer II. SUVs, she writes, have become the most popular vehicle on America’s streets. New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher exposes the problems with SUVs in his book High and Mighty: SUVs: The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way (Public Affairs, New York, 2002). It seems the behemoths are bad news for their own occupants, other drivers, and public safety alike. Take safety, for example. Bradsher writes that the height and width of the typical SUV make it hard for car drivers behind them to see the road ahead and avoid a crash. Guardrails built to protect lower-slung cars may flip an SUV. Longer stopping distances make them more likely to hit cars and pedestrians. The death rate per million SUVs is six percent higher than for cars, and SUV occupants face a higher risk of paralysis due to rollovers. Bradsher estimates that the replacement of cars with SUVs causes 3,000 needless deaths a year (1,000 in rollovers, 1,000 other drivers in collisions, and 1,000 people with respiratory ailments breathing their pollution). Many of the safety problems boil down to the structure of SUVs. The body of most cars is made in a single unit, which is fairly light and so increases fuel efficiency. This design allows for crumple zones, which can absorb collision impacts instead of transmitting these forces to passengers. By contrast, pickups and SUVs use body-on-frame architecture that starts with two 16-foot-long sections of steel rail with steel beams welded between them. The body is built in another part of the factory and bolted onto this all-purpose chassis. The underbody is heavy, which hurts fuel economy, and stiff, so it crumples poorly in a crash. But the manufacturer saves money on design because a lot of different bodies can be bolted onto the same frame. For example, the 1996 Ford Expedition was basically a pickup truck with a couple of extra doors and two extra rows of seats. It cost $24,000 to make and made Ford an astonishing 50 percent profit. The Ford Navigator was an Expedition with a few panels changed and a huge chrome grille. Selling for $45,000, it earned its manufacturer $15,000 in profit per sale. With products like these, Ford’s Michigan Truck Plant became the most profitable factory in the world for any industry. The plant accounted for a third of the company’s profit in 1998, even though Ford had 52 other assembly plants worldwide. California senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer recently introduced bills attempting to plug some of the loopholes favoring SUVs over cars. But the bills’ outlook appears bleak; previous congressional efforts to rein in the monsters have gone nowhere. SUV manufacturing has become a cornerstone of the economies of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin, all states with outsized political influence because they are so closely fought in presidential elections. Building SUVs has also become a mainstay of employment for the nation’s wealthiest and most politically powerful union, the United Auto Workers. Why do so many of the same baby boomers who inspired the environmental movement and made fun of their parents’ big gas-guzzlers want to own SUVs? Clotaire Rapaille, a French medical anthropologist who has become an American auto market research guru, blames the shift on our most primitive impulses. Á la neurologist Paul MacLean, who came up with the concept of the three-tier brain, Rapaille believes people’s reactions to a commercial product can be explained by different types of brain activity: the cortical, for intellectual assessment; the limbic, for emotional responses; and the reptilian, reactions based on survival and reproduction. Rapaille classifies SUVs as the most reptilian vehicles because their imposing, even menacing, appearance speaks to people’s deep-seated desires for survival and protection. The Dodge Durango’s front end is intended to resemble the face of a savage jungle cat, with vertical bars on the grille that resemble teeth. People in touch with their inner reptile choose vehicles that look especially likely to demolish others in a collision. Those fearful of crime buy SUVs because they are trying to look as menacing as possible to others. Armored cars for the battlefield, SUVs reject the possibility of being civil on the roads. The formula, says Rapaille, is to be masculine and menacing on the outside and feminine and Ritz-Carlton on the inside, where it is warm, with food, hot coffee, and communications. Dianne Hales confirms this analysis in the recent Parade magazine article, “The New Family Car, Our Home Away From Home.” Hales writes that the “new car” is a combination breakfast nook, entertainment center, changing area, and chat room. The biggest mom-pleasers are features that make life on the road easier: juice box-sized cupholders, dinner trays, and separate temperature and audio controls for kids. Many see new entertainment options, such as back-row DVD players with pull-down screens and individual headphones, as sanity-savers. Women make more than 60 percent of the car-buying decisions. The family car is usually mom’s car. Mom-pleasers, however, may not please Pop or the kids. Bradsher finds that minivans, introduced in 1983, are much safer and more fuel-efficient than SUVs, but became stereotyped as “mom-mobiles” that once-rebellious boomers saw as advertising their domestic burdens. Surveys showed that buyers rarely used 4-wheel drive yet absolutely wanted it, even though the vehicle would be less comfortable and less practical for everyday use. What counted was to impress on others that they really were the bold adventurers they wanted to be. Bradsher reports that the auto industry’s own market research, carried out by companies such as Strategic Vision and AutoPacific, shows that SUV owners tend to be insecure and vain, nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving, are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, and show little interest in their neighbors or communities. Having conquered America’s highways during the last decade, SUVs are on their way to taking over the rest of the world’s roads. They are becoming popular with affluent families around the globe, in France, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, and Australia. The exception is Japan, where a strong sense of community led to powerful social pressures against neighbors whose vehicles took up too much parking space and blocked the view of other motorists. Seeing that the American public is enamored of ever-larger, military-based vehicles, Freightliner, a maker of 18-wheelers, entered the market in 2000 with the Unimog. This is a hulking German military transport, 20 feet long and 3 feet taller than the tallest SUV, nearly the height of a basketball net. Its asking price is $150,000 and its gross weight 13 tons, about the same as a Tyrannosaurus rex. Naturally, Arnold Schwartzenegger was among the first to own one. The National Public Radio program “Car Talk” held a contest to name the beast, and some of the winners were Dodgezilla, Franken-smog, and Testostosaurus Rex. As bad as American road safety is now, Bradsher predicts it will get much worse because of SUVs. Market research consistently finds that today’s teenagers and college students rank SUVs as their favorite vehicles. They love the feeling of power they get driving them. There are relatively few SUVs on the used car lots now, but soon they will be numerous and cheap enough for many youngsters to buy. The convergence of young males, who are the most dangerous drivers, and SUVs, which are the most lethal vehicles, will surely make itself felt in morgues. Bradsher writes, “The only thing scarier than a drunk or teenager at the wheel of a shiny, new, full-size SUV will be a drunk or teenager at the wheel of a 15-year-old, full-size SUV with failing brakes.” Who needs terrorists, when we can contemplate the red alert of a million Model T. rex taillights? Jerold M. Lowenstein is professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. jlowen@itsa.ucsf.edu |
