@antinomy

There are some things in this life that completely mystify me! One of these things is the overwhelming popularity of gigantic SUV's at a time when it should be blindingly obvious to everyone that what we need is smaller and much, much more economical cars not bloody great big gas guzzlers.

Vehicle manufacturers seem to be falling over themselves to make bigger and bigger SUV's. The largest models from BMW and Jaguar being particularly outstandingly obese!

It isn't just the monstrous fuel consumption and thus emissions of pollutant exhaust gases, of such huge heavy vehicles that occasion a problem. Engine efficiency has improved so much in recent years that the pollution caused by tyre wear has almost outstripped exhaust emissions as a source of life endangering pollution. Of course, the larger and heavier the vehicle, the more tread dust is worn off the tyres as they wear. Rubber, I hear you say, is a natural substance and therefore non pollutant. However modern tyre treads are made of at least 50% crude oil based plastics along with a large number of other extremely pollutant substances.

The other thing that I have discovered about SUV drivers is that most of them have absolutely no idea whatsoever how wide their vehicle is. The result of this is that they drive in the middle of the road or on the wrong side of the road presumably to avoid hitting the curb or other obstacles on the near side of their overweight Chelsea tractor. I will probably make myself very unpopular by saying this, but my experience suggests that female drivers have the greatest difficulty estimating the width of these gigantic vehicles. I say this because on the very narrow country lanes in the area where I live, most of the SUV's whose drivers almost push me off the road, into a ditch seem to be driven by women; perhaps I'm being very unfair; maybe that is simply because much of the driving that is done in this rural area during the day is for school runs or shopping trips; expeditions largely undertaken by women not men.