1000 Flowers for the Planet - #250 Ban the SUV/4WD

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #250 Ban the SUV/4WD

[With this Flower I celebrate the quarter way point in my journey of 1000 Flowers for the Planet}

This will be a controversial Flower suggestion. Four wheel drives definitely have their place and are required by a few drivers i.e. farmers and forest rangers; but they have absolutely no place in the city. Most SUV and 4WD owners would never even take their vehicles off a major highway, let alone into the real bush – they probably wouldn’t even know how to handle them off-road. Most of the SUV/4WD vehicles I see driven in my city have short women behind the wheels. And they drive their vehicles as though they are sports cars. If it came to avoiding an accident, I doubt they’d be able to handle the vehicle.

Some people purchase their SUV/4WD so they can haul around up to nine passengers. Let me suggest that if you are purchasing your vehicle based on the fact that you are taking other people’s children to sports matches, then I suggest you sit down and think about what you’re doing. If all of those children are definitely your own, then I fail to see how, once the car is full of passengers, there is any room left at all for baggage of any kind, let alone school bags and hockey sticks. Try a station wagon or a mini bus.

SUV/4WD vehicles cause issues on the road. Whilst the driver in the SUV/4WD thinks they need the height for better visibility, if more and more people get SUV/4WDs then everyone will yet again be at the same height. How dumb is that? Regular sedan drivers have their visibility taken away by the SUV/4WD, particularly in car parks. This creates dangerous situations. Furthermore, many of the safety features of a sedan are negated when involved in an accident with an SUV/4WD because the impact spot is so much higher. And the SUV/4WD is definitely more difficult to handle in an emergency situation and more likely to roll than a sedan.

But if none of that matters, let’s consider the impact on the planet. They use more petrol/gas and create more CO2 emissions than sedans. If you’re reading these Flower suggestions, then you are probably interested in the planet. Why aren’t we working towards transport that creates less impact?