More than just a waste of space

Lorraine Sommerfield

WHEELS COLUMNIST

If I have learned anything after writing about driving for nearly two years, it's that you mess with someone’s vehicle choice at your peril.

Despite the Nobel Peace Prize being handed to an environmentalist — again — I'm still not allowed to ask why people drive giant SUVs.

Apparently, I’m supposed to shrug and realize it’s none of my business, and that people can drive anything they can afford, or raise the credit for.

It is not polite to question why North Americans consume like pigs, then squeal like them when their right to that conspicuous consumption is questioned. Well, this week has been just one damned thing after another.

I watched a big Ford Expedition SUV being effectively wedged in a drive-through as an overmatched driver tried to talk on her cellphone and dig out a loonie at the same time.

As she threw her truck into reverse, I could practically hear the Saturn behind her yelp in fear.

We’ve had months-long construction in our town that, admittedly, is getting on everyone’s nerves. But it’s now down to some raised manhole covers and uneven pavement.

So tell me why the guy in the Nissan Murano crossover ahead of me needed to slam to a full stop and gingerly step his way through the obstacles like a princess in a prom dress crossing a puddle.

Here was the closest chance he was going to get to actually need the clearance he’d paid for. But instead he was angry at everyone around him, including a little Ford Focus that expertly navigated without a hitch.

He was yelling with his window down. If I’d been a little closer, I would have informed him that once you choose to drive something the colour of a peeled banana, you gave up “tough” a long time ago.

Big pickup trucks if you work in the trades? That makes sense to me. SUVs for cottages and off-road pursuits? Sure. But if you’re scared to get it dirty, you may have chosen the wrong vehicle.

Years ago, I drove bigger vehicles, believing I needed the space for my two boys. A decade on, I’ve finally realized it’s for those very same kids that I need to not be over-vehicled, and I was being careless about my purchases.

I was wrong.

I use every square centimetre of the Pontiac Montana SV6 minivan I drive now, but I can’t wait until I don’t need it.

Of course, I’ve been informed rather tersely by a couple of readers that until I give up cars totally, I’m still a part of the problem.

Maybe they’re right. But hopefully my thinking is headed in the right direction. I read an article recently about Hummer abuse. Apparently, owners are subjected to tirades, vandalism and insults based entirely on assumptions.

I will cop to many of those assumptions, though I would never stoop to vandalism and my tirades are confined to my home, except this one, which I will be roundly clobbered for.

I’m not sure if the article was trying to garner some sympathy, but one of the owners quoted laughed that he purposely drove like an idiot “because he could.” Are some of us really so wrong in wondering why someone needs to drive something the size of their living room?

And I want to tell the guy who capped my week by practically driving his Lincoln Navigator up my bumper in the right lane on the way home from the cottage that taking up more room doesn’t give you magic powers.

These super-sized road bullies just give me a headache.

Lorraine Sommerfeld’s column appears Saturday in Wheels and Mondays in Living. www.lorraineonline.ca

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