Nine inches of snow dropped on the Greater Baltimore area yesterday. Not a lot by Buffalo standards, but more than the combined total snowfall of all the storms we’ve had over the past two winters.
Shoveling the driveway would’ve been easy except that my next door neighbor parked her new SUV in the narrow street, forcing the snowplow to take a wide berth around our connected driveways. So, after shoveling my driveway, I had another 10 feet of heavy snowplow snow to remove. The neighbor, meanwhile, didn’t bother shoveling — she just drove right over the piled-up snow.
Driving into work today, I watched a Ford Taurus go off the road and into a guardrail when a Dodge Durango shed its rooftop snowcap directly onto the smaller car’s windshield. The SUV driver kept going, oblivious to everything but his leather seats and dashboard GPS. I would have liked to see if the driver was okay, but my little Hyundai was boxed in between a couple of minivans, an 18-wheeler and a yellow Nissan XTerra, also sporting a roof-full of snow.
It’s time for a backlash, please. This behavior of the gluttons who purchase these things is perfectly in keeping with our expectations of their selfishness. They don’t care about the environment, nor about the increasing dependence on foreign oil, nor about the danger to other drivers on the roads, nor the danger to themselves.
Ever been to a concert where you’ve paid for a decent seat, but the people in front of you insist on standing up? Eventually, you have to stand up, too, forcing the people behind you to stand, and so on, and so on. I’m afraid that’s going to happen on the roads, too, as smaller, more efficient cars are traded in, just so we can see what’s going on around us.
UPDATE (01/01/03): Should have seen her comment long before now, but Chloe has a GREAT list of reasons to hate SUVs on her blog.
