4wd safety?

[marcus]

Driving to work today i was confronted with the scene of an accident right in front of me , the crash involved 3 vehicles 2 sedans and a 4wd, thankfully it seems no one was seriously hurt but it could have been so much worse.

it seems to me that one of the sedans turned infront of the 4wd at a set of traffic lights and of course got collected , the third car seemed to crash trying to avoid it all, but the 4wd careened down the road out of control fish tailing and trying to hang on for dear life but unfortunately had to much speed up and rolled a few times because of severe body roll.

now my question is why do people use these types of vehicles for everyday suburban use???

ok so it may have been a farmer on a trip into town for odds and sods , but more and more people these days are buying 4wd as suburban veheicles and sending the wife out to do the shopping in them , to me it just seems dangerous and an accident waiting to happen, the tend to fall over alot once they get a bit of speed wobbles up because the body roll is tremendous , and frankly normal sedan drivers like myself dont stand a chance if one decides it wants to take us out.

so what can be done ?????

should they be banned for suburban use ???

should the manufacturers work out a way to stop the body roll??

should owners take a special licence test or a course to get them better equiped for the vehicle ?? (in fact i think that should be mandatory for every licence holder)

im interested in peoples opinions on this subject whether you be a sedan or small car driver or even own a 4wd yourself.

I understand some people actually do take them off roading say once a month or something , but surely the ones that dont even see a dirt road should have a word to shouldnt they ???

[Wrex]

Geez Marcus, how many topics do you need?

[marcus]

LOL , sorry got carried away

actually I heard you need to read things three times before you can understand them Wrex , and who said i never think of you

[Wrex]

A little trigger happy, or just a pre-mature poster?

[woodyracing]

hmm 4x4s, good for hills, mud and towing.
On the road as a passenger in one i felt sick, as a driver in one I thought it was going to topple over. Tough 4x4s and pickup trucks are cool, but Im not keen on those posh over large shopping trollies

[Lee Janotta]

Oh boy... SUVs (as tall four wheel drive truck-based family vehicles are called here) are a scourge upon the earth, and a horrific danger to everyone on, next to, or within spitting distance of the road.

People here can't drive to begin with. They wander between lanes, they don't signal, they don't know basic traffic rules, they don't pay attention to the road because they all drive with automatic transmissions, and they certainly don't know a damn thing about vehicle physics.*

So then you take one of these idiots who shouldn't be driving in the first place, and put them into a 4500-pound tank of a vehicle built on a very simplistic and ill-handling truck chassis, jack it up a few feet off the ground... And then give them lots of nice luxury options so they can get good and distracted while they're careening down the road. Oh, hey, while we're at it, how about we make cellular phones almost a prerequisite in our society to give them even _more_ to be distracted by?

The dumbest accidents happen in these machines. Case 1, this is from personal experience. Subject is a woman appearing to be in her late '30s, driving a Jeep Cherokee. Most boring accident I've ever seen. She takes a right-hand corner at what, in a car, would be an acceptable speed. Significant body roll in an SUV, though. But then her right front tire gets onto the pedestrian ramp built into the curb, rolls up the incline into the full curb... She panics and turns harder _towards_ the curb as the feels the vehicle become unsettled, rather than turning to the left and getting the vehicle rebalanced... Then there's the inevitable thud as the Jeep goes over on it's side. At least she was wearing her seat belt, and soon climbs out from the passenger side.

Case 2, from TV footage: A Chevrolet Trailblazer towing a camper is blown onto it's side... By the wind. Need I say more?

Case 3, from Motor Trend magazine: This one takes the cake. A woman in her early '30s walks to her SUV while jabbering on her cell phone in a mall parking lot. She climbs into the vehicle, starts it, and without looking for traffic, put it in reverse and backs into an innocent Honda parked in the next lane, breaking several of it's lights and denting it's fender. Still skawking into her phone, she puts the vehicle in drive, and rolls straight over a parking lot divider, curbs, grass, dirt, flowers and all, straight into traffic, turning left across all lanes, with a Ford sedan barely missing her... All the while still yelling into that stupid phone, _and_ with a Motor Trend editor chasing after her trying to get her to stop because of that Honda she crushed.

Fortunatly I've never seen this one happen, but a lot of these damn things are so tall that in a side impact with an MX-5, the front bumper would clear the Miata's beltline, and take off the head of one of the roadster's occupants. Very scary proposition.

If drivers there are anything like drivers here, most of them shouldn't even be allowed _near_ a vehicle, much less allowed one with size and power which would make most third-world army tank divisions jealous.

*Does not universally apply to sports car or BMW owners, but pretty much all others.

[josvandeperre]

There was a woman interviewed in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday who has only ever driven Mitsubishi or something - new one every couple of years - because she was in an accident when young in which a small car (and her) got damaged - now get this : every one has had anti-pedestrian bull bars - she acknowledged that all they did was damage pedestrians but its ok because as a result she feels safer - on the streets of London !

[garcon]

I know there have been cases of 'engineered' safety concerns, the Ford Explorer being the classic example...

"It's the tyres!" Yeah right, sure, whatever you say Mr Ford...

But I can't help thinking it's the who drive them that are dangerous, not the vehicles themselves.

[Lee Janotta]

To me, it's dangerous drivers getting an even more dangerous vehicle with which to create havoc. Both should banned.

[garcon]

Actually, the worst culprit over here is a BMW! The X5 has covered Cheshire like an STD rash. And as far as I'm concerned, it's about as desirable. They're all either black or silver with "privacy glass" - so even if the idiot bothered looking at a junction they wouldn't be able to see...

Invariably, they're driven by peroxide blonde trophy wives who'll drop their one child off at school (undoubtedly onto the road side of the car, while parked on the chevrons outside the school). Then she'll be off to the shops and coffee with her chums before careering around town cos she's late for her hair appointment. There's a saying round here about such vehicles...

If you see a car in London with blacked out windows, chances are it's someone famous who doesn't want to be noticed. If you see a car in the Golden Triangle (Wilmslow, Prestbury, ALderley Edge) with blacked out windows, chances are it's some who wants you to think they're famous and can't stand not being noticed...

Or something.

Rant, wibble...

[josvandeperre]

Well we seem to be agreed on the problem now whats the solution - ban the vehicles or their drivers ?

[garcon]

Train the drivers properly, then ban them for cases of stupidity...

And put an additional 'road' tax on the vehicle unless the owner can prove the need for 4x4 capability due to profession or where they live.

[429CJ]

I have a Nissan 4x4 Pick-Up '94 as everyday car and got never any problems of that kind. Of course if you drive it like some young sod in GTi, it will have body roll, but if you drive it remembering that it is a pickup, not Ferrari, there's no problems at all.

[Lee Janotta]

Oh, I agree... I've driven lots of trucks... The problem is that very few people know what the bloody hell they're doing in a car, much less a truck.

[Bluebottle]

If all drivers were trained properly in the first place they would be well equiped to deal with the 4x4 handling problem but certainly here the biggest driving school boasts of how many of their pupils pass their tests in so many minutes- put bthem in a car which needs to be driven with more care and you get trouble!
As for why they are used in London, I can tell you for sure it's because we have what a motoring journalist called 'Third World Roads' with more holes than flat stuff and a growing number of speed humps!!
My old Landy (1965 series 2a) was, of course, built like a tank but had rock hard springs and no seatbelts- speed humps had to be taken slowly!!

Garcon, most of them wil already be in the higher tax band because of larger engines and/or higher emmisions figures.

By the way, for those taking the somewhat sexist views- there waa a major accident last year (or was it in 2000) in which 4x4 towing an overloaded trailer came off the road and ended up on a railway line, a train hit the car and the resulting mess killed several people. The driver of the 4x4 was..............


a man.

[garcon]

Originally posted by Bluebottle
By the way, for those taking the somewhat sexist views- there waa a major accident last year (or was it in 2000) in which 4x4 towing an overloaded trailer came off the road and ended up on a railway line, a train hit the car and the resulting mess killed several people. The driver of the 4x4 was..............

...asleep

You're right about the tax largely. But thinking about it, any kind of financial penalty is unlikely to harm the majority of those who insist - they've paid £30k plus and get 8mpg... a few quid in road tax ain't gonna put them off.

Of course the sexist view was purely for comedy value. It's not a stereotype I believe in, oh no...

[Bluebottle]

Just as well Garcon
Yes, the driver fell asleep and it wasn't because of the nature of the vehicle- but could you imagine the tabloid headlines if it had been a Woman!!

Just thought i'd start an argument before I go off on holiday!

[garcon]

Hope it rains...

[Airhead]

Being a motorcyclist, I can't stand them.

Size does matter - but it's inversely proportional to length.

[DAVID PATERSON]

I agree that it all comes back to driver training. If people were taught how to drive properly and consider the physics of motoring, then these vehicles would be far less of a problem.

While they remain as popular as they are, any attempt to regulate their use or ownership would be political suicide.