I really enjoy Malcom Gladwell's writing, so I read his latest on S.U.V.'s with interest. Of course, I was properly horrified at the poor safety of S.U.V.'s and unhappy with the consumerism and corporate greed which has produced the flood of these vehicles. The test drive information was particularly sobering.

One of the reasons that S.U.V.'s have been successful is that people think they are safe. Gladwell interviewed an anthropologist whose job is understanding why people believe cars are safe. Rapaille lists the top feelings about safety:

... everything surrounding you should be round and soft, and should give...

...if I am bigger and taller I'm safer. You feel secure because you are higher and dominate and look down...

Unfortunately, it turns out that being big, full of "protection", and high off the ground are precisely the characteristics that make an S.U.V. less safe than a car. Worse, still, because people falsely believe that they are safer, they are emboldened to take risks that they would otherwise not take. This is not comforting since car safety is a matter of life and death. Gladwell goes on the ponder the state of the automobile industry:

But that's the puzzle of what has happened to the automobile world: feeling safe has become more important than actually being safe.

As usual, in America, perception is more important than reality.