“Terrorism and SUVs: Authors ploy to justify waste” is a response to an argument, by Woody Hochswender, titled, "Did my Car Join Al Qaeda". In this article, Hochwswender argues for the justification of casually driving sport utility vehicles. He lists everything from their safety to the fact that criticizers of an SUVs wastefulness often make wasteful choices of their own. One thing he doesn't really get into is, surprisingly, why it was necessary to make such huge comments about terrorism and even September 11. This grasping of straws indicated to me that Mr. Hochswender was on a mission to justify his waste, by any means necessary. Let's examine some of the futile reasoning brought forth by this article.
The first straw man logic is seen in his first argument (paragraph 4). If I reside in a place where it snows, at times, I must always drive a vehicle equipped to travel in the snow. So with that in mind, we should always walk around with umbrellas up in the air because we know that occasionally it might rain on us! Why couldn't you have a four wheel drive vehicle at home just in case it snows, rather than always drive around at fifteen miles per gallon simply because you live in a winter region? As for the mention of black ice: is there some new technology in an SUV's rubber tires that make them invulnerable to ice? The laws of physics can portray a clear contradiction to this argument simply by revealing that objects of greater mass require more friction to stop. Ice is an even playing field as far as friction goes.
Chapter six brings us into a new level of illogical thinking. First he mentions the fact that SUVs, in some situations can roll over and pose a threat in stability. This was obviously off topic, being I thought we were discussing waste, but he was at least right. Driving responsibly is the only way to prevent rolling over. Next he throws in, "if some drunken driver veers across the center divider", in an attempt to display the...