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Friday, January 09, 2004

Unsafe at any speed

Malcolm Gladwell has a fine essay about S.U.V.s in this week’s New Yorker.  It’s always fun to hear, once again, just how much contempt automobile engineers and manufacturers have for the people who buy these stupid metal boxes, but what’s interesting about Gladwell’s essay is that he doesn’t simply cite the standard industry market research that shows that “S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.” (David Brooks once did a column mocking this finding as a form of S.U.V. envy, neglecting to note that the finding came not from some Volvo-driving, latte-drinking left-wing freak show but from the auto industry itself.) Instead, Gladwell finds that people buy S.U.V.s because they think that big vehicles are safe, and they employ bizarre rationales like “if the vehicle is up high, it’s easier to see if something is hiding underneath or lurking under it.” (There’s an online New Yorker interview with Gladwell here).

But here’s the really telling thing: the things that people like most about S.U.V.s, and that lead them to associate S.U.V.s with safety, are what make the vehicles so unsafe.  They’re basically big hunks of inflexible steel-frame construction, they don’t maneuver well, and they’re so heavy that they require an extra two car lengths to come to a stop from 60 mph.

All right, let me think.  So there’s this thing that people associate with safety, and the very features they associate with safety are the features that make the thing so unsafe.  I’ve been waiting all week for someone to make the obvious point, namely, that the S.U.V. couldn’t be a better metaphor for the Bush-Cheney response to 9/11, but the week’s nearly over, so I might as well make it myself.

Posted by Michael on 01/09 at 10:18 AM
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