Posted on 12/23/2003 7:22:55 PM PST by jrushing
Inside the system
Xmas slay that the rich go for
THE BIG Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) favoured by the rich are twice as likely to kill pedestrians as a normal car in an accident.
The finding comes in the latest edition of the authoritative journal Accident Analysis and Prevention it is based on systematic research in the US headed by engineer Clay Gabler.
SUVs have become a fashion fad among the rich for their "country estate" connotations. Many have a kind of "bull bar" grill on the front which serves no other purpose than to make it more likely someone hit by the vehicle will be killed.
Clay Gabler explains SUVs "are heavier, stiffer and geometrically more blunt than passenger cars and pose a dramatically different type of threat to pedestrians. The probability of serious head and thoracic [chest] injury is substantially greater than with a car."
As cars are lower in profile they tend to cause leg injuries when they hit people at lower speeds. These are less likely to kill than head injuries.
"One way to reduce head injuries from SUVs", says Gabler, "would be to replace the blunt front end with a sloping, more aerodynamic one, making them more car-like. But this won't be popular with SUV buyers, who like their rugged off-road look."
We wonder what New Labour will put first-public safety or the dangerous lifestyle choice of its rich friends
"WE were there
"My husband was drafted in November 2002. He was taken to Fort Campbell in Kentucky and kept there for three months of retraining before his draft even started. He was told he would be in Iraq for 179 days. Now he has been told he will be there for 508. He wants to come home. So many of the US soldiers want to come home. I think the war has everything to do with corporate and oil interests. I am proud to be on the demo today. I hope it will have an impact in the US."
JARI SHEESE, member of Military Families Speak Out "
I didn't know we were drafting soldiers again. Or was he drafted by some other country and sent to us for training? ROFLMFAO
When the lettering is put on it will read, "Upper Crust Kindergarten and Capitalist Oppressor Day School"
BTW, back in college, I helped ends meet by driving a school bus 3 days a week. I had driven an M-113 in Vietnam, so they apparently thought I had adequate experience. The kids tried to imitate my Yorkshire accent, with little success. They somehow took it for Irish and soon started calling me "Leprechaun," even though I am 6' tall and hail from Carlisle, England.
One day, I was tooling along 50th street in Lubbock, fortunately in an empty bus, when a young lady in a Ford Pinto took it in her mind to change lanes, right into the side of my bus.
The car bounced off with a rending crash, spun, and jumped the curb. It ended up facing the opposite direction in a supermarket parking lot. I stopped and called my dispatcher, then got out and went to the battered Pinto.
The first words out of the driver's mouth were, "I never saw you!" Her tone suggested that this was somehow my fault.
It took me a few seconds to respond, but I finally said, "OK, lady, the thing's 46 foot long and ten foot high, and it's painted BRIGHT YELLOW. I don't know what else we could do. Hang strobe lights on it, maybe? Different colors, ya' know, maybe red and green and orange, flashing like the lightshow at a rock concert, the better to get the attention of witless ones such as yourself."
She looked at me as though I had just landed from Mars, and said nothing more. She got the ticket, naturally.
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