Should SUVs be Illegal?
On September 3, 1995 a fatal automobile accident occurred on highway 26; a small red car lost control when it hit a patch of wet pavement and headed straight towards a white Chevy Suburban. The impact of the collision ripped the small red car into two pieces resulting in a large fireball and instantly killing the two 20 year old female occupants. No fatalities occurred within the Suburban (Smith). Had the Suburban been a smaller, more conventional car the outcome may have been much different; no deaths may have occurred at all. SUV are becoming a huge risk on the roads today. Unfortunately SUVs seem to be ever growing in popularity. This increase in popularity is cause for several annoyances, all of which seem to be directly related to their large size. There are many reasons why SUVs should be illegal or somehow regulated; they waste gas, they are too large and they are overall more dangerous than conventional cars.
SUVs are not exactly environmental friendly. For starters, they have horrible gas mileage. www.fueleconomy.gov, a website dedicated to educating the public on the benefits of better fuel economy, has tables of the current fuel economy that 2004 automobiles are actually achieving. SUVs have a considerable lower fuel economy than more conventional cars; SUVs tend to average about 16 miles per gallon in the city and 20 miles per gallon on the highway, whereas conventional cars get around 20 and 26 miles per gallon respectively. Due to the SUVs excessive use of gas they have a higher rate of emissions when compared to other cars. The rise in SUV popularity factored with the greater emissions of SUVs means that more and more gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide will be released into the atmosphere as time progresses. These gases have an adverse effect on Earth’s climate; they are contributing factors to the greenhouse effect and therefore may play a large role in global warming (Environmental...