Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Atrios:

From talking to a few parents, the SUV craze is at least in part due to the perceived additional safety given that everyone else on the highway is driving a giant car. Probably stuck there. In fairness, my most frequent form of transport is a rather large bus.

This goes back a long way. Even when I was a kid, I routinely heard other parents say they felt better with “a lot of steel” around them, not tooling around in some little tin can. In that sense, SUVs are just replacements for the full-size land yachts that everyone loved in the 50s and 60s. As it happens, I’ve always suspected that the safety/comfort argument is largely a pretense for people who just like to drive big cars, but it’s a hard one to kill since there is, after all, a kernel of truth to it. Other things equal, a big, heavy car really is a bit safer than a small one if they hit each other.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate