Should there be criteria to permit people to buy a four by four?

[SovietPanda]

snip

I'm not saying there's no room for environmental consideration. Plenty of people i know with larger vehichles make efforts for the environment and it'd be a pretty safe bet that if anyone made a hydrogen cell 4x4 with comparable power to a current v8 alot of 4x4 driving soccer moms would adopt them. I also never said that driving, or driving anything in particular was a god given right. But they are simply a vehichle that is for all intents and purposes street legal so i should be allowed to buy and drive one.

 

[Jodah]

Ignoring all else to answer your question about why people buy them: safety. Nobody wants to be like your friend, they would rather be like the mother. When my dad got hit by a drunk driver and my brother died my parents vowed to never buy another car for the family vehicle. My dad always drove a pickup truck for work on the farm and my mom drove Ford Broncos forever. Even if everyone drove cars the SUV/Truck would be safer for accidents not involving another vehicle.

 

[Shock and Awe]

While I don't think people should get a different license for them, I do wonder why people buy them sometimes. I own a Jeep Wrangler myself, but I also often go off road for one reason or another, so its actually used for its intended purpose.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Ignoring all else to answer your question about why people buy them: safety. Nobody wants to be like your friend, they would rather be like the mother. When my dad got hit by a drunk driver and my brother died my parents vowed to never buy another car for the family vehicle. My dad always drove a pickup truck for work on the farm and my mom drove Ford Broncos forever. Even if everyone drove cars the SUV/Truck would be safer for accidents not involving another vehicle.

But then accidents with pedestrians would be far more lethal... and collisions with other cars would also be far worse for them while you were untouched. I guess a car designed to give a blood sacrifice of the other driver to save you is a good thing in a warped kinda way. Screw that people carrier full of children, their car can be converted into a crushed ball of burning scrap as long as i survive in my minature tank.

I can't believe I'm the first to point this out, but 4X4 is not synonymous with big honkin' SUV. All it means is the vehicle in question has 4 wheel drive. Now, 4X4 vehicles come in a variety of sizes; the Toyota Rav 4, for example, is a tiny little thing[footnote]by American standards; it may technically be an SUV, but there are plenty of sedans that are bigger[/footnote], but it still comes with four wheel drive. As for additional licensing required for big trucks? We already have that. You need a class E license to drive either a semi-truck or a school bus. Anything smaller than that, and there really is a legitimate reason for a lot of people to have or at least have access to them; try getting a new Washing machine home in a smart car, for example.

Sorry my bad. Im talking SUV.

 

[Hexenwolf]

Just wondering, did anyone else think from the title that this thread was going to be about very large burgers from In-N-Out? And was subsequently very confused?

 

[StarCecil]

I don't see any compelling reason why I should not be allowed to own a 4X4.

 

[PatrickXD]

I agree entirely. My mum has a 4x4, but that's because she needs it to tow her horse trailer, or for traveling on tighter country lanes when they are icy. For her daily trip to london she uses a small, dirt cheap hybrid to save on fuel.

 

[Tiger King]

this thread reminds me of a landrover i once saw being driven by a woman.
everytime oncoming traffic would approach she would move to the side of the road.

i can only assume she wasnt used to driving something so big n thought she might hit the oncoming traffic.

 

[Jodah]

Ignoring all else to answer your question about why people buy them: safety. Nobody wants to be like your friend, they would rather be like the mother. When my dad got hit by a drunk driver and my brother died my parents vowed to never buy another car for the family vehicle. My dad always drove a pickup truck for work on the farm and my mom drove Ford Broncos forever. Even if everyone drove cars the SUV/Truck would be safer for accidents not involving another vehicle.

But then accidents with pedestrians would be far more lethal... and collisions with other cars would also be far worse for them while you were untouched. I guess a car designed to give a blood sacrifice of the other driver to save you is a good thing in a warped kinda way. Screw that people carrier full of children, their car can be converted into a crushed ball of burning scrap as long as i survive in my minature tank.

I can't believe I'm the first to point this out, but 4X4 is not synonymous with big honkin' SUV. All it means is the vehicle in question has 4 wheel drive. Now, 4X4 vehicles come in a variety of sizes; the Toyota Rav 4, for example, is a tiny little thing[footnote]by American standards; it may technically be an SUV, but there are plenty of sedans that are bigger[/footnote], but it still comes with four wheel drive. As for additional licensing required for big trucks? We already have that. You need a class E license to drive either a semi-truck or a school bus. Anything smaller than that, and there really is a legitimate reason for a lot of people to have or at least have access to them; try getting a new Washing machine home in a smart car, for example.

Sorry my bad. Im talking SUV.

I know it was a joke but you are 100% right. If it comes down to me and the other guy possibly surviving or me surviving and the other guy possibly surviving I'll take the 4x4.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

I just look at it from my own personal aesthetic argument. To me they look like big blocks on wheels, and I dislike this.

Of course I wouldn't try to get anything regulated just because I think it looks ugly, but I'd much prefer it if aesthetically interesting cars came back in fashion.

 

[ace_of_something]

EDIT: Oil is used for plastics remember? The less we use in cars the more we get to use polyester clothes and plastic bags. I'd rather have it turned into clothes and items we can use for ages than burning a usefull resource pointlessly. And seriously... " its not low enough yet to bother rationing it".... how about we ration it right away so we have a relaible source and regulation of a finite substance? So we dont rush and use it all at once?

No, it doesn't drive that differently. My first car (a two wheel drive oldsmobile fricken boat) required me to compensate for turns more than my Jeep. When I had a sports car (in the long ago) it drove VERY differently than a coupe or a sedan. Making people get different licenses for classes of vehicle that still drive, turn, and operate about 95% the same is a HUGE waste of taxpayer money (not to mention time can you imagine going to the DMV everytime you switch class of vehicle?)

I live in a city of 500,000+ or rather, I live NEXT to a city of 500,000. I live in an incorporated series of acrages. When it snows the dirt road I live off of doesn't get plowed unless my 70+ year old neighbor gets help putting his shovel on his dodge (it's a bigun has duelies and everything) So I need something that can drive through 'the tundra'. Not to mention clearing brush on my property requires me to haul woodchippers or if I want to drive thru my acres (which are NOT flat and smooth) I need my jeep. I also have to pay more taxes on it than other people.

Thing is when I'm driving around in the city how often do you think people ASSUME they know my needs? I've had notes left on my Cherokee which irritates me to no end.

BTW My brother was killed in a car accident which a coupe smashed into his sedan it directly hit the driver's door. You can get hurt in ANY car accident. Driving a car is the most unsafe thing most people will probably do in their lives.

this thread reminds me of a landrover i once saw being driven by a woman.
everytime oncoming traffic would approach she would move to the side of the road.

i can only assume she wasnt used to driving something so big n thought she might hit the oncoming traffic.

My wife did this the first dozen or so times she drove my SUV. Until we were married she never drove anything that had more than two doors in terms of size.
Maybe that woman was driving her husband's vehicle?

 

[Radeonx]

ITT: Someone trying to tell someone else what they can and can't buy based on their own personal preferences and not those of the person in question.


Two things, OP.

One: She has a right to buy whatever the fuck she wants. Why should she give up her Land Rover because YOU don't think it's appropriate? Nobody made you king. You have no more a right to tell her what she can and can't drive as I do.

Two: She would have done that in a car too. The problem is not what she was driving, but how she was driving it. Oblivious dipshits are a hazard whether they're in a Hummer or a Smart Fortwo.




Let me run off some valid reasons a suburbanite would obtain such a vehicle.

1: Seats nine people as well as their stuff.
2: Shrugs off snow and ice that would stymy a FWD sedan
3: Can tow several thousand pounds without any issue
4: Carries far more cargo than an estate could
5: Allows one to more easily visit relatives in the countryside with driveways a 2WD can't readily handle.


For all you know she was only driving that because her normal car was in the shop and she had no choice.


tl;dr: Stop trying to force others to drive what you think they should drive because of your friend's car getting trashed. If she can afford the fuel she has every right to drive that Land Rover.

Basically, this.
You have no context as to why she had a four by four, so you complaining that she had one is stupid. Just because you're biased because your friend got in an accident doesn't mean that every driver in a four by four is a hazard...you said yourself that it was partially your friend's fault as well.

 

[winginson]

4x4s and their ilk should require a seperate license and only be allowed if you need one. Because most people seem to barely cope with driving a crappy 1 litre hatch safely, let alone one of those massive beasties with all the added complications and dangers they bring.

 

[JaceArveduin]

You guys are forgetting the people that don't trust anyone else on the road, and has decided that buying a tank of vehicle would suit them well. Some 18 year old rear ended my stepdads rig truck (3/4 ton dodge with a custom steel bed that has a welder and all of the tools to go along with that trade) while she was driving some lil car, which she had just got out of the shop from her last wreck. Her car? front end completely wrecked. His truck? It got one dent on the bumper bit that's hardly noticable.

There's also a few people who don't have much of a choice. I've got a 1500 silverado that was given to me when my parents realized they moved a lot with 3 vehicles, and was about to lose their third driver, so they let me keep it. It's not small, not the biggest thing, but not small. Not loud either actually, except that irritating squeak that goes in and out that's annoying as hell.

Here's a pic of his truck bed, or close enough, he's modified his.

Spoiler

But yeah, if I had the cash, I'd buy me an older truck and put a brush guard on the front, and probably put something to reinforce the back. If I hit something, my trucks going to be fine, which to be honest, all that really counts to me. I'll feel abit bad for trashin your vehicle if it's my fault, otherwise I'm laughin as I roll off with hardly a scratch.

 

[Aidinthel]

Just wondering, did anyone else think from the title that this thread was going to be about very large burgers from In-N-Out? And was subsequently very confused?

As delicious as In-N-Out is, no that hadn't occurred to me.

OT: I'm a bit uncomfortable with any sort of bureaucratic process to decide whether a person need something. By what standard would you judge their requests and what happens when someone has a perfectly good reason that didn't occur to whoever wrote the criteria?