I believe that people who drive SUVs are, on average, less intelligent than people who drive cars. If you need proof of this, drive around in a snow storm.
If you’re driving down the cleared right lane of an exit ramp at a leisurely and safe pace, it’s not unusual for some SUV moron to go flying by at high speed in the uncleared left lane.
Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t.
I include 4-wheel-drive pickups as SUVs, because people who drive these cars seem to think that having four powered wheels gives them more control in snowy and icy conditions. This is not the case. What matters for control in snow is what tires you have (most SUVs and trucks have normal road tires, just like cars [only a bit bigger]) and what brakes you have (most SUVs and trucks have the same braking systems as cars).
All 4-wheel-drive will do is increase the chances that you can get out of being STUCK in the snow. It does nothing to prevent you from getting stuck in the first place.
Now, personally, I don’t care so much if people’s incompetence and stupidity lands them in hot water (or a snow bank, as it were). I do care when people’s incompetence and stupidity gets in all the other peoples’ way!
Like the pickup truck that blocked most of the Nutley Street exit this morning, backing up I-66 all the way out to Chantilly and tripling the time it would’ve taken to get to the Metro station.
Or the Ford Bronco that came within inches of slamming into the car in front of me when they rounded a bend at clear-road speeds on solid ice.
Or—the worst of all—the moron in the SUV who slid off the freeway, slammed through a fence, and landed on the Metro tracks, thus shutting down the normally-efficient-in-snow Metro orange line.
And thus making everybody an additional 30-45 minutes late for the jobs they were already 30 minutes late for because of the pickup on the Nutley Street exit.
~sigh~