I was reading the other day about the terrible crash in Berlin where an out-of-control Porsche behemoth killed four and prompted calls to ban these oversized, overpowered cars from German city centres. And at the weekend I saw a woman in tears because she couldn't extract her Range Rover from a parking space. Up the road, someone was doing an 82-point turn trying to get some other variety of SUV into their paved over front garden without taking out the garden wall (that had already lost a chunk from a previously failed attempt). Last night, one passed me doing probably twice the 30 mph speed limit. I would like to say that's unusual. Every commute I seem to see more and more of these vehicles – the growth presumably from easy, low-interest financing. That's a bubble ripe to pop if interest rates rise.
I presume the main urge to buy these things is status and ego-inflation – though given every other car seems to be one and it's not like people are actually paying for them. In the supermarket car park the other week, I had a double-take, some of taken one of those horrid modern swollen Minis and bloated it further into an SUV version. Honestly, you've never seen an uglier vehicle. I'm still not sure I did see it, or whether it was a horrible paroxysm of my imagination. The sort of vehicle you're damned to drive down an endless boulevard in Hell in. With a radio that only tunes to smooth jazz and the inevitable screaming.
But on a serious point, the energy these behemoths impart in a crash is awful. And they have a secondary issue, and that's they make their drivers feel invulnerable, and they're the car of choice for people who think they have something to prove and it empowers them as bullies. And while cars generally may have got more efficient and emissions fallen, that's just been offset by them getting bigger.
I doubt the Germans will be successful in banning them, though I wish them luck. They're completely unsuitable for the road unless you need an actual truck or to drive off-road. I have several friends who have them, it seems a middle-class, middle-age thing. They're not even that comfortable once you've clambered into them, overstuffed as furniture showrooms.
I think in a decade or two, they'll be one of the things people boggle about, really they drive those?
Or I hope. I'd ban them. Or maybe fly around south London in an A10 Warthog and deliver my own justice via an extensive range of ground-to-air munitions and 4000 rounds per minute of sweet, depleted uranium sentiment.