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SUV Owner's Guide to Road Manners (abridged)Dec 11 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Congratulations on your purchase of your SUV truck! Yes, we gave you an owner's manual when you purchased your truck, but we forgot to include this SUV Owner's Guide to Road Manners booklet. As per a recently passed law regarding SUV and Highway Safety, we are required to give this information to you, although we realize that you'll probably never read it and it will remain in your glove box forever along with your owner's manual... Driving an SUV entails additional responsibilities (compared to a regular car) to you as a driver. These ten points are summarized below: 1. Never tailgate others: Maintain a long following distance. Your SUV has a longer stopping distance than most cars, and it is heavier, so if that car in front of you brakes all of the sudden, you will not be able to stop in time and you will rear-end him/her. That automatically puts you at fault for the accident and you say hello to higher insurance premiums for the next five years. Your high view of the road ahead will unknowingly cause you to tailgate, so consciously leave a lot of room between your SUV and the vehicle in front of you, more than what your Driver's Education teacher told you. 2. Do not tint your rear windows. Because your SUV sits higher than a car, the driver behind you already has a hard time scanning far ahead on the road necessary for alert and defensive driving. The sheer width of your SUV and the height usually has other drivers looking smack in the middle of your large plump rear end, not your window. Do not make it harder for your fellow driving citizen by tinting your back windows, thereby not allowing them to see what's up ahead on the road as they crane their necks up to try to see through your car. 3. Yield to all cars passing and coming into your lane, especially in stop-and-go traffic. No driver likes to be behind a big truck where they can't see what's going on in front of them. So when the car behind you wants to get in front of you, please yield accordingly, keeping in mind how you felt when you had a car and you were behind an 18-wheeler. This gesture of courtesy is especially important in stop-and-go traffic. 4. Park within the lines and makers of parking spaces. Please take the time to get familiar with your car and practice maneuvering it through tight spaces. If you find that you don't have the driving skills to perform such maneuvers, I suggest trading in your SUV for a regular car-- I am sorry to say that you are not fit to be an SUV driver. When parking in a parking lot or on the street, please realize that the size, weight, and length of your car does not give you the right to park outside of the designed markers and lines and into someone else's spot. Unless you really like getting your SUV keyed and your tires slashed often. 5. When backing up, turn your body/head back, go slowly, and use extreme caution. Remember that you are in fact driving a truck. Truck drivers have the amazing driving skill of backing up a huge vehicle using only side mirrors. You are probably not a licensed truck driver, and should not attempt to pull the same maneuver. Instead, back up very slowly while turning your head toward the rear window as you back up. Do not simply look at your rear view mirror or side mirrors. Even so, there is a large "blind spot" under your line of sight for objects, children, and property below the level of your rear windows. So you must be very careful. (True story: A Chevy Suburban in New York City backed up into a man in a wheelchair and killed him while the driver was backing up too fast to parallel park. Lesson: Make sure you know what's around your SUV before backing up.) 6. Turn gently on corners, much slower than you would in a car. Do not go into delusion that your SUV is a sports car. It is not designed for driving fun and thrills, it is designed for utility. The word "Sport" in SUV refers to the sport of off-roading, not the sport of racing. Do not drive through corners at high speeds. In the event that you tip over, make sure you roll over in multiples of 360 degrees. That way you land on your tires and can still drive out of the way of traffic and not cause a jam that will inconvenience your fellow citizens. 7. Do not use your door as support when climbing into your SUV. Either carry a step stool with you, or attach a step under your door with a handle on the body frame. Or buy a rope and harness kit at your local outdoor sports store. When you climb into your SUV holding the door as support as you pull your body up, not only can you lose balance as the doors swing open uncontrollably, you can ding the car next to you (or break the window, because of the height of your door) in a parking lot, which necessitates another call to your insurance agent. 8. Do not refuel during peak hours. It is common courtesy that during peak hours at the gas station when there are cars in line to refuel, you try to fill up as quickly as possible and exit promptly. Filling up your 25 gallon fuel tank is akin to a car driver filling up their tank, washing their windows, opening their hood and checking all fluids, and checking their tire pressure when there are 15 cars in line waiting for an open pump. So either fill up only about 5 gallons for emergencies, or come back during off-peak hours to fill up your tank. That is the right thing to do. 9. Do not demonstrate your off-roading capabilities on city streets. We understand your urge to want to go off-roading in your SUV, but please do so "off the road," not on city streets. Activities such as going up the curb to pass on the right of a slow car, crossing over a divided highway, going over shopping carts and pedestrians a la Monster Truck Madness are inappropriate for what your SUV was designed to do. Note: some SUV models were not designed for off-roading at all, but give off the image of being off-roaders and hence sold with the assumption that you'll never notice because you will never take it off-roading. We at Furd Motors would never do such a thing to you, so trust us. 10. Have your headlamps adjusted down at the dealer. We apologize, but your headlamps were not properly adjusted at the factory. We didn't realize that the height of the headlamps on your SUV would project straight into the rear view mirrors of passenger cars and straight into the eyes of oncoming drivers, hence blinding them. Please ask your dealer to adjust the headlights so that they project down about 20 more degrees than their current setting. This adjustment will be covered under your new car warranty.  |
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