Why do people drive SUVs?

[primavera]

84. Up to a point

First of all, I'm glad that you like your SUV and that it suits your purposes. I wasn't actually criticizing you for driving one, only expressing curiosity as to why SUV drivers were so infatuated with them.

However, I part ways with you to some extent when you say that it's no one's business what you drive so long as you drive responsibly. Absolutely it is no one's business what you drive if your driving choice harms no one. The tricky bit comes when you try to find a mutual definition of what constitutes "harm." Some people would argue that, because of their size and marginal handling, SUVs make the roads less safe for drivers of other vehicles. There are enough studies out there to suggest that may indeed be true. If you're driving a vehicle that belches out emissions, some might argue that you're contributing to poor air quality that the rest of us have to breath. If your vehicular choices contribute excessively to higher rates of respiratory diseases that the rest of us have to suffer from and pay higher insurance premiums for in order to treat, is that not also a potentially valid basis for claiming a harm being done? There is a finite quantity of oil in the world and, as we consume more and more of it, it becomes scarcer and we pay more at the gas pump for it. We undertake environmentally risky activities like drilling in deep water, producing catastrophes like the BP oil spill (and the lesser oil spills that occur around the world on approximately a weekly basis). Arguably, much of our foreign policy is motivated by our demand for cheap oil to fuel our vehicular choices, causing us to invade countries like Iraq at great expense in both money and human lives. If every person in the US drove a high fuel efficiency, low emission vehicle, we wouldn't need to do these sorts of things. I might still be able to eat Gulf seafood that isn't covered in crude oil. I might be able to travel in the Middle East without fearing for my life. I might be able to breath without the aid of an asthma inhaler. As it stands, we have to provide large quantities of cheap gas for consumers who want to drive fuel inefficient vehicles, so I don't get to do those things. One could argue that constitutes a harm. If you don't think it is, come visit us on the Gulf Coast and take a look for yourself at the grotesquely mutated seafood coming out of the Gulf since the BP oil spill and the vast dead tracts in what used to be one of the world's most fertile and diverse ecosystems. If your choices are, indeed, causing someone else a harm, even if only indirectly, do you still feel like your choices are none of their business?