People buy SUVs for the same reasons that some teenagers carry a knife: They feel insecure, their environment seems dangerous and they long for the admiration of their peers. Both behaviours are clearly anti-social but driving an SUV is more blatantly so because rather than being hidden in the owner’s pocket it is aggressively shoved in everyone’s face, a full-on “F**k you” to the rest of society.
When someone buys an SUV they are trying to buy an advantage on the road. They hope that if their vehicle collides with somebody else’s the added height will cause their bumper to smash through the windows of the smaller car, crushing the occupants and absorbing the impact. In fact, while it is true that you are more likely to be killed if you are hit by an SUV rather that a normal car, some SUVs have much higher that average driver death rates, according to a study by the IIHS in the US, so like knives they endanger the owner as well as everyone else.
Given all this it’s really not surprising to read research, conducted by car manufacturers and published in Keith Bradsher’s book Bumper Mentality, showing that:
SUV buyers tend to be “insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are.”
So what’s wrong with keying SUVs? It makes them less attractive to own, possibly makes people think twice before buying one and may be the only way to make the owner realise that the stares they get all day aren’t admiring glances. Even so, criminal damage is just as anti-social as buying an SUV, and if the owner bought the thing because they are afraid of their environment then keying their car may just make them behave even more badly. I personally think that a sticker campaign would be a good idea. Something like “I love you but I hate your ugly car”. Maybe I’ll design some. In the meantime, I’m really glad that Ken is intending to increase the London congestion charge for vehicles that produce loads of CO2. Social pressure doesn’t often work with anti-social people, financial pressure just might.
At a tangent, I have noticed, anecdotally, a strong correlation between cost / size of vehicle and the probability that it carries a personalised number plate. Intriguingly there is a related and equally anecdotal observation of the correlation between people who have personalised number plates and the probability that they are a twat.
Isn’t there an organisation in France that goes round letting SUV tyres down and leaving a leaflet under the windscreen explaining the error of the SUV way?
One could always key them as well, though.
I like the leaflet idea. The Alliance against Urban SUVs have a range of fake parking tickets you can put on people’s windscreens. They don’t have a Lambeth one yet, I should get on and design one.
By the way, in the interests of openness and honesty I should point out that I did used to own a Land Rover, back in the day. I don’t think I’d want to own one now, though.
We are semi-seriously considering a landrover … but perhaps we have a reason … .