Ya know, I’ve probably beaten this horse into the ground before.

But it still gets up to bother me: the over-abundance of oversized vehicles driven by a disproportionate number of people who obviously do not require the use of said vehicles.

Okay, lest I get overly critical and judgmental of people’s reasons for buying these juggernaut vehicles, let’s do a sanity check of some good reasons to acquire/maintain a SUV:

  1. You have a large number of children (or otherwise an extended family living very near you) that need transport, and you lack other vehicles or means of transport.
  2. You live way up in snow country, or in other remote, off-road or non-paved access land.
  3. You use your (sic) utility vehicle to haul lumber or other cumbersome goods on a regular basis, but not of sufficient quantity to merit purchasing an HGV (heavy goods vehicle) or a semi-truck.
  4. You are actively engaged in the defense of your country by using the SUV to support the repelling of foreign invaders, or suppressing a rebellion (your mileage on this one might vary)
  5. You have a church bussing ministry you are supporting with your capacious but not necessarily luxurious SUV.

Otherwise, we are left with these following reasons for getting that Cadillac Escalade or Chrysler LeBehemoth:

  1. Keeping up with the "Joneses" who bought one (but you just had to one-up them with that GPS and six-station onboard satellite i-Pod gizmo!!)
  2. "Restoring your Manhood" per the original Hummer ad campaign (credit goes to GayProf of CenterOfGravitas for his recent bloggage about that) … come on guys… no amount of vehicular surfeiting will do anything to correct the (perceived or real) size of your "manhood". Grow up already.
  3. Just buying one because the car dealer happened to have a carlot full of rotting dinosaurs unmoved inventory that he was "willing to let go of for a steal" (over $30k) at a 0% six month APR (that will hike to 15% after Bernanke gets done yanking our economic chain around). Yeah, where can I sign up for that deal…

And then you have the audacity to complain about filling its gas tank up for $60 a shot…? 

hummer 

Allow me then to propose (on a state-by-state basis) an additional road use fee or registration charge for SUV class vehicles, one realistically based upon a formula derived from the following factors:

  • Vehicle weight (wear and tear on the roads)
  • Vehicle emissions (exactly how much and what sort of carbons and sulfuric pollution is that McGasbelcher XT dumping into our already overloaded atmosphere?)
  • Fuel Economy (How much of a fuel usage footprint does your Thundertank make, when you might have other options that are more viable?)

The problem with all of this is … my thinking is incredibly out of synch with current economic reality.

As long as there is a fast buck to be made, things will never change to consider the needs of our home, our people, or our future. Perhaps the basic problem is our current undlerying consumer "superculture":

Me first. Me now. Me. Me. Me. Screw everyone and everything else.

 

Why can we not get it through our THICK skulls that there is something bigger than "me… me.. me…"? If we keep walking down this path, if we do not repent of our selfish way of "doing business"…

… surely our children and grandchildren will curse our generation with every step and with every breath.