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For the past year or so, I've labored with little
success to install a new word: spewt.
It is a
convenient one-syllable term that replaces awkward
locutions like Sport Utility Vehicle,
SUV
and
Sport Yute.
It can be construed as an acronym for
something like Soccer Practice Extremely Wasteful
Transportation,
and environmentalists can contend that
the term is derived from spew,
as in spewing
toxic gases.
Granted, it's a harsh-sounding word with some negative connotations, but as a spewt owner and driver myself (1991 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer), I can hardly be accused of being some brie-and-chablis Volvo-driving elitist who wants to deprive decent hard-working Americans of their right to drive whatever monster truck they want to drive.
So, let's look at the positive side of spewts. One is that they're educational, in that middle-aged people learn things they should have learned in ninth-grade general science class.
The ads portray spewts as rugged vehicles that can race up wretched roads in the back-country. What the ads don't show is that spewts are prone to tipping over, for the same reason that they can navigate the scenic terrain.
When you're trying to drive such roads, you want a vehicle with high clearance, so that your oil pan doesn't get snagged by rocks. You also want it short and narrow, so that you can turn nimbly and squeeze between trees and boulders.
Put all those factors together, and you've got a vehicle with a relatively high center of gravity, and that means it is prone to tipping. That's how the laws of physics work.
The engineers who design the vehicles know that you have to make trade-offs. A wider vehicle is less likely to tip, and it will be more comfortable inside, but it won't go as many places.
Millions of Americans don't think about this, though. They see the spewt commercials, decide they need to visit the great outdoors, and then learn something about the laws of physics when their spewts don't stay upright.
These educational adventures also provide needed income for mechanics and tow-truck operators in mountain towns, and by and large, they're a deserving group of people.
Spewts are also good for the auto industry. There's hardly any profit margin on efficient little family sedans, but a full-size spewt generates $10,000 or more in corporate profits. Little wonder that they promote them so heavily.
Nor is that the only vital industrial sector that benefits from spewts. The typical passenger car gets 28 miles per gallon. Spewts tend to get less than 20, and some go as low as 12. The more miles that people drive in spewts, the greater the demand for gasoline, and the higher the price (and profit margin) for the very same public-spirited oil industry which generously trained the top two executive officers of our own nation.
Besides that, the more oil we import, the more important it is to maintain a big military establishment to protect our foreign supplies, and that means more of the bases and defense contracts that are so important to congressmen and senators seeking re-election.
So spewts offer something to just about everybody that matters in America, although the current pro-spewt propaganda campaign, waged by a front group that calls itself the Coalition for Vehicle Choice, focuses on safety.
If something heavy, like a spewt, collides with something light, like a little sedan that gets 35 mpg, the spewt occupants are more likely to walk away unharmed from the collision.
The safety in size is relative, of course. No matter what a moron is driving, up to and including a Peterbilt, if he tries to race a train to the crossing and loses, it's the locomotive engineer who is most likely to walk away.
Thus the CVC argues that Americans who are concerned about the safety of their families naturally want big, heavy spewts.
While it's hard to quarrel with that logic -- it's based
on momentum,
the product of mass and velocity and
another one of those things we learned in ninth-grade
general science -- it does inspire some fear.
After all, I don't drive my spewt all that much, since the family sedan (most recently, a 1990 Geo Prizm) is more comfortable and gets better mileage.
But how comfortable will I feel in that car when I start seeing ads for the Ford Exterminator, bigger than an F-350 and able to demolish whole herds of wimpy little gas-sippers? Or when parents are charged with child endangerment because they bought a crushable Chevy Cavalier instead of a crushing Dodge Dakota? Or when I'll need a periscope to see what's going on around me when I'm surrounded by towering spewts?
I'm all for vehicle choice,
and so I wish the CVC
would live up to its name, and do a little work toward
making American roads safer for people whose vehicle
choice
isn't a spewt.
Otherwise, there may not be any real choices in the future -- it will be too risky to drive anything that gets more than 18 miles per gallon.
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