About 25 years ago, I first opined that internal combustion engine vehicles have a way of turning otherwise decent human beings into monsters.
An otherwise docile little librarian gets behind the wheel, and because she’s got 100 or more or more horsepower at her beckon call, just by tapping her foot, she feels like she’s the equal of the grimiest wrestling smack-down brute. “Get out of my way, sucker! I’ll blow your doors off!”
Now, I’m convinced that the Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) is that same contraption–which pollutes the air, crowds the streets and lanes, and kills tens of thousands of Americans on the roads every year–on steroids. And while there’s no putting the “horseless carriage genie” back into his bottle, most of us have not yet even recognized that our laziness, and daily motoring habits, are helping us dig our own graves.
Despite the TV commercials in which smiling motorists navigate winding mountain roads or remote trails in some lush rain forest, 99.99 percent of the owners of those oversized monstrosities, don’t drive any farther than home, to work, to school, to the fast-food drive-in, to the gas station, to home again! All of that big engine, big high view of the road, and big budget expense counts for nothing more than a vain image of superiority in the mind of the motorist.
Now that gasoline is already averaging $4.00 per gallon, sure to reach $6.00 per gallon by the end of the summer, and will be knocking at the door of $10.00 per gallon by the end of Barack Obama’s first 100 days as President, those who can afford to do so are trading those gas-guzzling SUVs for more economical vehicles.
But not everybody… (After I completed this article, by coincidence I was forwarded this YouTube link, which bears witness to the remainder of this reminder.)
Now enter your typical urban “Thug:” Continue reading →