They Come Over Here, They Take Our Houses...
Review: Pants Amnesty
What Do You Do When A Plinther No-Shows?
A Purr With Your Play
Theatre Review: A Lament For Medea
Londoners are twice as likely as other Britons to buy off-road 4x4 vehicles despite the capital being better known for heavy traffic than any mud, rocks or steep slopes. According to research on Friday, one in six Londoners looking to replace their car in 2006 will buy an off-road vehicle, a study by the AA motoring organisation showed.
Hmmm. And what did the AA think of this?
When you consider the volume of traffic in London it is almost counter-intuitive that drivers in the capital opt for large vehicles traditionally associated with rougher terrain
Counter-intuitive is one way of phrasing it. Another way would be to say that anyone driving a 4x4 is a twat. Or a knob. Perhaps even a twatknob.
Do any of our readers drive these things? We'd be interested to hear back from anyone that does, especially if they can defend their reasoning in buying one. Perhaps it's a medical condition. Can you get a doctor's note for being a prick?
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
Have you seen http://www.stopurban4x4s.org.uk/ ?
They'll send you some fake parking fines that inform 4x4 how tottally stupid they are. They're great! :)
Cheers Ed!
I particularly like the Top 10 reasons not to drive an urban 4x4 which begins with You're not a farmer
I think the 4x4 in town phenomenon is a reaction to driving in an aggressive environment where people feel out of control. It's vapid, self-indulgent and a bit pathetic, really. If people would get off their damned phones and pay attention to the roads, they wouldn't feel so vulnerable whilst driving.
I live in London and drive a 4x4 at the weekends. I bought it because it was the cheapest vehicle which was well-constructed, in good condition, and in which I fit. The only other vehicles which I could expect to last fifteen or twenty years and in which I fit were more than twice the price.
And it amuses me that I am exhorted to be aware of the Comment Policy, and yet your writer says that I am a twat and a prick, thus falling foul of that very policy. As does one of the tired and predictable follow-ups.
David - Even if you're a top bloke, the sad truth is that if you drive a 4x4 you will get called a knob and worse. They should have pointed that out at the dealership and maybe offered to knock a couple of hundred quid off.
If you have a gander through the website linked a couple of comments up within one of the tired and predictable follow-ups you'll find a list of very good reasons to avoid your current choice of car.
Only driving the car at the weekend simply means that you're only likely to kill people 2 days a week instead of 7. The money you saved will be a big deal right up until the moment your car rolls over a family in a regular car. Unless of course you take the thing off-roading well out of the capital in which case feel free. As with most things that happen beyond the M25 I don't give a stuff. Sacrifice policemen in giant wicker effigies for all I care.
As for a 4x4 being the only vehicle that you fit into well I'm HUGE and have no problem fitting on a bus, the tube, a cab and have even been known to cycle albeit very wobbly and with Nelson from The Simpsons pointing and laughing at every corner.
If there is a medical reason for your only being able to get in and out of a 4x4 then you have my condolences in not only having a rare malady, but also having to put up with people like me calling you names.
As for the comment policy warning you not to call me names, then yeah that amuses me too. Then again that policy only covers the comments (the clue is in there somewhere) and not the actual posts, but if you feel hard done by then feel free to ignore it for the remainder of this discussion. I happily admit to being a twat and a prick on a regular basis, albeit my fingers on the keyboard do not (yet) have the potential to screw up the environment and squish children like bugs.
Feel free to let me know which busses, tubes and cabbies will take me to deepest darkest Sussex, Yorkshite, and all the other places I go at the weekends, often well away from the train network, and carrying enough people and baggage that driving is cheaper than taking the train anyway. Oh, and I don't think it would be possible to roll my vehicle, at least not on a public road. Well before it got that unstable I'd have chickened out of driving so ridiculously fast around corners, and even if I didn't chicken out it would just go sideways.
If you scroll to the bottom of that silly site, there's a few quotes. I agree with every single one of them apart from the one about pollution. Everyone knows that those hateful bendy buses are far worse :-)
I once tried to drive a Ford Escort through Yorkshire and almost died. David, there's a reason why it's impossible to get to those places. Didn't you learn anything from An American Werewolf in London?
And anyway isn't there enough to do in London at the weekend?
Even if you're the best driver in the world all it takes is for someone else not to be and hey presto you've driven your behemoth into and over a smaller car, crushing all inside.
I hate bendy buses as much as the next guy, but I prefer them to every bus passenger driving their own 4x4 instead. Now I'm beginning to like you mainly because you didn't threaten to punch me, but don't ruin everything and tell me you have a second car to trundle around London in.
Oh I dunno, I'd quite like to see everyone whizzing around on quad bikes. It would make Piccadilly Circus far more exciting.