This article is written by Andrew Simms and was published on 29th November 2004. The author expresses his viewpoint on a very popular band name car known to the car dealerships and public alike as SUV. Emphatically, Simms is voicing his opinion concerning the dangers of driving SUVs. Importantly, he likened interacting with SUVs as being similar to smoking tobacco. He continues to advance arguments to prove his stand on this matter.
Precisely, he projects that they ‘clog up streets and litter weekend news ; there is an acute distance between their image and reality; the death rate from accidents caused by SUVs is increasingly alarming; they are accident enabled vehicles or death traps above all other passenger cars; roadways are polluted by them. Clearly, he expands his argument to say that they are direct and indirect health hazards and definitely should be removed from the car industry. (Simms 1)
Response
When all of these factors are taken into consideration based on the way they were presented in this article, definitely, no one would buy this car. There have been rumors that knowledge about the dangers of SUVs should become an integral aspect of pre-training measures when offering young people driver’s licenses for the first time.
Therefore, the culture of SUVs being worthless is gaining momentum among drivers and customers despite, manufactures’ resistance to recall this most dangerous piece of equipment. Would you buy a car that looked like this? Really, the writer did not say much about how SUVs looked, but was rather critical of its usage as a popular car. Maybe its popularity stemmed from people gravitating to the way it looked.
Generally, it would appear that there is an increasing market for SUVs. This explains reasons for its manufactures still being in business. Simms argues that SUV’s clog streets up and liter pages of weekend news as if SUVs actually (Simms 1) clog up streets with litter, which is a misrepresentation of the vehicle. He continues to present his sentiments on it being a middle class icon of a car. This is very true.
Impressively the author attempts to interpret data from World health Organization to support his argument from a scientific perspective. Maybe he was utilizing the fear of fallacy to convince readers that SUVs are really not the image they present.
The facts are while this data may be very interesting; merely colleting data does not qualify a layman to use them for his/her own purposes. People often quote scripture to their advantage to prove their point.Mr. Simms could be adapting the same strategy to remove SUVs from the market. The precise figures are that in 2004 WHO discovered that 1.2 million people are being killed on the roads yearly while 50 million are injured. (Simms 1)
There have been no definite references to SUVs and how much they have contributed to the death rate. However, in the opening paragraph the writer uses a blanket statement declaring a WHO prediction of substantial death occurring from this dangerous equipment, which is still roaming our roadways.
Subsequent deliberations concerning SUVs polluting the atmosphere due to emission controversies sounds great for people who really do not know how emissions operate. Then, to link it with current trends in global warming stimulating thinking about ozone layer protection surely would grasp the reader’s attention. Disappointingly, there appears to be no supporting empirical evidence to prove that these accusations are in fact solely related to SUVs
There are millions of cars on the world’s roadways. Have there been experiments to prove that by removing SUVs the world’s dilemma of global warming and the ozone layer crisis would be resolved? Perhaps, had Mr. Simms offered readers some more empirical evidence relating ozone layer catastrophes and global warming effects to SUVs they might have already been recalled as many drugs from the market including tobacco, which so often was his major point of reference.
In concluding, Mr. Simms’ account of alerting consumers to the potential dangers of SUVs is commendable. Many times the public needs to have alternatives to major fads in society. Certainly, acquisition of SUV is a twenty- first century fad of the elite middle class.
However, it takes more than an incomprehensive article cutely decorated with non empirical WHO figures and global warming allusions to convince dealers and consumers alike to dump SUVs. From the present market rating SUVs could be around for a very long time. Mr. Simms could still be asking, ‘Would you buy a car that looked like this?’
Works cited
Simms, A. “Would you buy a car that looks like this?” New Statesman 29 Nov, 2011: 1.
Web. 27 April 2011. http://www.newstatesman.com/200411290004
