Bad News For Motorists..

[Albert Tatlock]

There are more important things to be concerned about in life.

Not after a typical family saloon gets hit from the side or rear ended by one at speed there won't be.

[thesultanofsheight]

You can drive what you want , if you want a 4x4 gas guzzler that eats tyres and returns shitty MPG, fair enough, you have made your choice. What pisses me off with the whole 4x4 issue is people who think it is their god given right to criticise others for making a choice. They paid their money, they bought the car. There are more important things to be concerned about in life.

 

I have to agree with you, but with one caveat.

 

Its fine to drive around in what you want but if its not environmentally sensible to do so you should pay for it. Someone who drops £60,000 on a new 4.6 litre Range Rover to me can afford to pay £1,000 road tax - its a tank it rips up tarmac, and its about as econonical as running around in the Space Shuttle.

 

Same should go for a Aston, Bentley (thats a 6 litre W10 engine) or any other big machine - people buy them to advertise their wealth so they should cough up extra road taxes.

 

People hate 4 x 4's because they are not really paying their way - a few quid extra down to poor fuel economy but they are not paying a fair share in terms of environmental damage compared to a Micra or Ford Focus or something. Plus in an accident pedestrians come off much much worse being hit by a 4 x 4 and they should load the insurance accordingly as well because the size of personal injury claims must be proportionately higher.

[Max Power]

I don't know where all this crap comes from, road tax in the uk is relevant to the co% emissions, IF the particular vehicle is in a high emission band the owner pays higher road fund licence fees!

Then when they buy the vehicle they pay more VAT than the average car owner, and if the thing does use more fuel, they pay more tax on that!!

 

I'm not really a big fan of 4x4's but this ridiculous media witch hunt really annoys me, they never miss an opportunity to get a little dig in even if the subject is just motoring related!

[Frances]

As I drive a Smart (600cc, 58mpg + only 2.5m in length) I can feel somewhat smug (tho vulnerable!) - my own pet grouse is with the Steam racket - why are vehicles not charged by length and/or weight ? it is possible to get 4 smarts in the space of one of those monster mobile homes - I fit within their trailer length but they won't accept me as a self motorised trailer at the preferential rates. Here is one positive pricing mechanism that Government could lean on SP so as to encourage smaller cars.

[jim]

whats the big bad wit 4x4's? most of them have bigish tyres hence they spread there load over a bigger area than most vehicles and while pulling off they spred the touque through x4 bigger tyres.

[Bombay Bad Boy]

That will come from the gas powered, Pulrose station. Where is the saving there?

Just out of interest, could you build a nuclear power station for say, £120m or so?

 

Also consider large hybrid vehicles which are quite high performance and low emissions with good economy?

Warning, hybrid vehicles are a major cause of smug.

[Amadeus]

There are more important things to be concerned about in life.

Not after a typical family saloon gets hit from the side or rear ended by one at speed there won't be.

I guess you're referring to your earlier post with the link to that crash video? Well, great - maybe we should all just drive Smarts then - because if an

or a

, you're buggered in the smaller car anyway, so let's just do away with free choice altogether, and let's all drive Smarts! And bugger hard work and the rewards of being able to choose the car you like - who needs that anyway?.. Sorry, Albert, but I don't buy into your argument here, and that's for a number of reasons:

 

Firstly, I remember a crash test carried out by a German car magazine in co-operation with TÜV Deutschland (German MOT and general material testing authority) quite a few years ago, in which an older 4x4 (I think it was a Nissan Terrano or Patrol) was crashed head-on into a VW Golf III - the 4x4 literally slammed into and over the smaller VW, and the driver in the Nissan would have been critically injured, if not dead, as older 4x4s were designed 'too stiff', i.e. they're not 'flexible' enough in the right places with their chunky steel frames, and the steering wheel + any attached bits came right up, seriously head-butting the dummy 'driving' the thing - in this case (where I can't find a video for, and I have tried) the SUV wouldn't have had any advantage - in fact, it came off worse. Bigger definitely wasn't better in this case...

 

Secondly, modern cars - due to recent changes to the law in many countries - have to be designed to facilitate a certain degree of "crash compatibility", i.e. they have to take into account a collision with a smaller vehicle, or even pedestrians - a fact, the video you linked to unfortunately failed to mention. Jaguar, for example, has just introduced the Pyrotechnic Pedestrian Deployable Bonnet, a system specifically designed to protect pedestrians in a collision - Toyota is already working on an airbag system for pedestrians - these systems aren't introduced into the smaller and cheaper models first, though, oh no - they are first available in the top-of-the-range models, as the manufacturers have to set off the huge costs for developing these technolgies before passing them down to Joe Average, so if we all drove Smarts, we wouldn't have these developments, as it would be way too expensive to work on them.

 

Mercedes, for example, first introduced Airbags in the S-Class at the beginning of the 80's (if I remember that right), and gradually passed the technology down to the smaller E and C class models (C then being the 190s). And if you ever wondered what the three letters SRS on your steering wheel stand for, then that's "Supplemental Restraint System" - most people think, that simply stands for the airbag in their car, but a mercedes engineer once explained it to me in a different way: "The guys that developed the airbag thought it might be a good idea to not only have an airbag, but to have an airbag that's 'intelligent' - a system that knows that you might smash through a sturdy fence before hitting a mighty oak tree - the SRS Airbag system was designd to deploy only when you hit the tree, not the fence, hence making it a supplemental system, as your seatbelt can easily take the impact of the fence, but won't be enough to protect you when you hit that tree.." You won't get that kind of thinking when you develop shoeboxes for the masses...

 

An finally, posting a little clip from C4, showing an old SUV smashing into a small car, is like saying "Nobody should ever drive a tank, as they can really damage cars"...

[Stu Peters]

Its fine to drive around in what you want but if its not environmentally sensible to do so you should pay for it. Someone who drops £60,000 on a new 4.6 litre Range Rover to me can afford to pay £1,000 road tax - its a tank it rips up tarmac, and its about as econonical as running around in the Space Shuttle.

 

Same should go for a Aston, Bentley (thats a 6 litre W10 engine) or any other big machine - people buy them to advertise their wealth so they should cough up extra road taxes.

 

People hate 4 x 4's because they are not really paying their way - a few quid extra down to poor fuel economy but they are not paying a fair share in terms of environmental damage compared to a Micra or Ford Focus or something. Plus in an accident pedestrians come off much much worse being hit by a 4 x 4 and they should load the insurance accordingly as well because the size of personal injury claims must be proportionately higher.

 

There are plenty of £100,000 cars available secondhand on the island right now for the price of a dull new family saloon - should their second/third owners pay tax on the basis of their new value?

 

When I bought my Lotus in 1990 it almost cost as much as my house, and people called me a flash git. Had I just bought a bigger house, nobody would have batted an eyelid. But I get my jollies at Halfords rather than B&Q - so isn't that what democracy is all about? At the moment I rent a flat but I've got two nice cars and a motorbike, so am paying three lots of road tax and insurance, yet I only drive/ride one at a time - I reckon I should get a bloody REBATE!

 

As for 'rips up tarmac, economical as the space shuttle' - what planet are YOU on? And to suggest that insurance companies don't already load premiums at EVERY possible opportunity is just crazy talk.

[Cret]

Firstly, I remember a crash test carried out by a German car magazine in co-operation with TÜV Deutschland (German MOT and general material testing authority) quite a few years ago, in which an older 4x4 (I think it was a Nissan Terrano or Patrol) was crashed head-on into a VW Golf III - the 4x4 literally slammed into and over the smaller VW, and the driver in the Nissan would have been critically injured, if not dead, as older 4x4s were designed 'too stiff', i.e. they're not 'flexible' enough in the right places with their chunky steel frames, and the steering wheel + any attached bits came right up, seriously head-butting the dummy 'driving' the thing - in this case (where I can't find a video for, and I have tried) the SUV wouldn't have had any advantage - in fact, it came off worse. Bigger definitely wasn't better in this case...

 

I saw a very similar thing on a Top Gear repeat the other week where they had some smaller cars like a fiesta etc which had been given very high safety ratings and showed the result of crashes whereby even at a decent impact the car was a write off but the cabin was perfectly intact and there'd be basicaly no injuries to occupants. Then they did the same with a land-rover freelander and despite it being a much bigger/heavier just as new vehicle it was a real mess after the same test. It basically buckled in two with pedals/steering wheel pushed right back and a mangled cabin.

The assumption that 4wds will automatically come off better in a crash is pure nonsense - a lot are built on old fashioned design rather than having the same focus on safety features that modern cars have.

 

At the moment I rent a flat but I've got two nice cars and a motorbike, so am paying three lots of road tax and insurance, yet I only drive/ride one at a time - I reckon I should get a bloody REBATE!

 

As for 'rips up tarmac, economical as the space shuttle' - what planet are YOU on? And to suggest that insurance companies don't already load premiums at EVERY possible opportunity is just crazy talk.

 

Ditto - I've got 3 cars at the moment and I have to pay tax on all of them even though as Stu says I can only use one at a time. People might think I'm rich having three but none are expensive cars and I am certainly no worse to the environment as I only use one at any time anyway plus walk to work & back every day instead of driving in. The only reason I can afford to have them is because I do all the repairs & maintenance myself. Why should I be penalised when I'm no worse environmental threat?

 

Yes one of them is a landrover discovery but it's a diesel and I only really have that so I can tow my boat or to move large stuff around in. I do actually use it for doing the shopping run now once a week or two, but that's because basically otherwise I would be paying an additional £140 a year to use it about 3 or 4 times.

 

Despite having 3 cars, I probably do less damage to the environment than the average single car owner that drives to work each day so all these ideas people come out with for monster taxes etc would really rip the piss out of people like me totally unfairly.

 

And yes, I also have never seen a 4x4 'ripping up tarmac'.

[Albert Tatlock]

I guess you're referring to your earlier post with the link to that crash video? Well, great - maybe we should all just drive Smarts then - because if an

or a

, you're buggered in the smaller car anyway, so let's just do away with free choice altogether, and let's all drive Smarts! And bugger hard work and the rewards of being able to choose the car you like - who needs that anyway?.. Sorry, Albert, but I don't buy into your argument here, and that's for a number of reasons:

So given free choice, with high house prices you'd have no objection to people bringing over and driving around and living in caravans, or 300 people suddenly driving around in tractors on the island because their a fan of Fred Dibna? Of course not, because like SUVs they are not compatible with our roads.

 

When a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) strikes a car in frontal impact, there are four driver fatalities in the car for every one driver fatality in the SUV. THAT's why they should be discouraged for everyday use, when there are many vehicles available with comparable space inside. SUVs are not compatible with other cars, I've seen the results first hand - and it isn't nice. These things ARE tanks when it comes to a collision.

 

Transport statistics bulletin (1996-2000)

 

I don't disagree with freedom of choice at all, but with freedom of choice comes responsibility. It's like the smoking argument: 'do it away from me'. I'm saying 'keep doing it, but SUV away from me'. People are demonstrating selectivity in their principles here.

 

Discouraging vehicles such as these on this small island will directly influence the number of road fatalities, and is, IMHO, something that SID should consider seriously if it is to maintain serious credibility.

[Cret]

When a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) strikes a car in frontal impact, there are four driver fatalities in the car for every one driver fatality in the SUV. THAT's why they should be discouraged for everyday use, when there are many vehicles available with comparable space inside. SUVs are not compatible with other cars, I've seen the results first hand - and it isn't nice. These things ARE tanks when it comes to a collision.

 

Not according to at least two tests then:

 

 

Firstly, I remember a crash test carried out by a German car magazine in co-operation with TÜV Deutschland (German MOT and general material testing authority) quite a few years ago, in which an older 4x4 (I think it was a Nissan Terrano or Patrol) was crashed head-on into a VW Golf III - the 4x4 literally slammed into and over the smaller VW, and the driver in the Nissan would have been critically injured, if not dead, as older 4x4s were designed 'too stiff', i.e. they're not 'flexible' enough in the right places with their chunky steel frames, and the steering wheel + any attached bits came right up, seriously head-butting the dummy 'driving' the thing - in this case (where I can't find a video for, and I have tried) the SUV wouldn't have had any advantage - in fact, it came off worse. Bigger definitely wasn't better in this case...

 

I saw a very similar thing on a Top Gear repeat the other week where they had some smaller cars like a fiesta etc which had been given very high safety ratings and showed the result of crashes whereby even at a decent impact the car was a write off but the cabin was perfectly intact and there'd be basicaly no injuries to occupants. Then they did the same with a land-rover freelander and despite it being a much bigger/heavier just as new vehicle it was a real mess after the same test. It basically buckled in two with pedals/steering wheel pushed right back and a mangled cabin.

The assumption that 4wds will automatically come off better in a crash is pure nonsense - a lot are built on old fashioned design rather than having the same focus on safety features that modern cars have.

 

I would agree that in some cases you're right Albert, ie where it's a car with an old design against one of these things then yes, the safety devices in both vehicles are likely to be as bad as each other so 'biggest wins' as it were. With a modern car though that is apparently not necessarily the case though as these posts have demonstrated, so typing it in bold doesn't make that generalisation any more true. Out of the ones I saw tested on Top Gear I would WAY rather have been in the fiesta that the freelander if they had a head on collision. I'd walk away from it whereas the SUV driver would have potentially had smashed to bits legs and broken ribs.

 

I wouldn't have my discovery if I didn't need it for towing the boat, generally speaking I use my car when I need to drive. I do also strongly agree with comments about SUVs being used to take the kiddies to the school as well. Because whilst I don't agree that an SUV will necssarily murder the occupants of another car in a crash, I do agree that they would make more mess of a child that runs ou into the road, and where is that more likely to happen than outside a school? Especially when mummy is hassled about getting back to watch this morning or the shopping channel, doing her makeup AND putting up with noisy kids in the back, an SUV combined with tons of other kids running around is a bad idea.

 

When I was a kid my mum had a revolting yellow mark1 or 2 escort estate (with brown vinyl seats that roasted your skin in summer when forced to wear shorts), and she managed to fit 5 of us in that no problem, so why do people think it's so difficult to do that nowadays?

[Slim]

Ditto - I've got 3 cars at the moment and I have to pay tax on all of them even though as Stu says I can only use one at a time. People might think I'm rich having three but none are expensive cars and I am certainly no worse to the environment as I only use one at any time anyway plus walk to work & back every day instead of driving in. The only reason I can afford to have them is because I do all the repairs & maintenance myself. Why should I be penalised when I'm no worse environmental threat?

 

Your three cars all parking off the road are they?

 

And you are a heavier envoronmental threat than a single car owner. Each of your cars is stuffed full of oil and oil based materials, do you think they were grown out of trees?

[Grumble]

My vehicles are all parked off-road and have probably got less oil in them than your kitchen cupboard.

 

Sorry, you're clearly more environmentally aware than I am, so I guess the plastics and synthetics in your life are all made from vegetable oil and coconut husks?

 

Another great post in the tradition of 'I don't want so you can't have'.

[Mr. Sausages]

Each of your cars is stuffed full of oil and oil based materials, do you think they were grown out of trees?

 

Well, technically, yes.

[simon]

When I was a kid my mum had a revolting yellow mark1 or 2 escort estate (with brown vinyl seats that roasted your skin in summer when forced to wear shorts), and she managed to fit 5 of us in that no problem, so why do people think it's so difficult to do that nowadays?

 

You were lucky. We had crawl to school on our hands and knees. And we didn't have shorts.