 Malcolm does it again. My favourite New Yorker
writer this week (it's not in the online edition, alas) psychoanalyzes
America's passion with the SUV and provides some frightening
conclusions on automobile safety and driver psychology, and then wryly
hints at, but leaves unsaid, some deeper truths that might naturally
follow.
The first part of the article basically says that Americans love SUV's because they make the driver feel safe,
powerful, in control, under any driving conditions. They love them so
much in fact that one Ford SUV plant in Michigan grossed 11 billion
dollars last year (almost as much as McDonalds nationwide). And the
automakers love them because SUVs are not subject to the same
regulations as cars and minivans, and as a result are much cheaper and
easier to build. Gladwell then shows, by means of a visit with Consumer Reports
and a review of accident statistics, that the feelings of invincibility
and control in an SUV are sheer myth. Bottom line is that the benefits
of an SUV's size and weight in an accident are more than offset, much
more than offset, by the higher risk of getting into an accident in the
first place due to less precise and responsive handling, longer braking
speed (AWD notwithstanding), and fewer signals to the driver of poor
road conditions. And that's despite the marginal advantage of
visibility due to the height of SUVs, itself offset by a higher risk of
rollover.
Ultimately the problem is all in the driver's mind. If drivers realized
that they are no safer (in fact somewhat less safe) in an SUV than in a
subcompact, their concentration and driving behaviour would compensate,
SUV accidents would fall, and millions of ruined lives would be spared
the consequences of this unwitting recklessness. Unfortunately, as long
as SUVs convey the illusion
of control and safety, that's not likely to happen. And the answer
isn't to make SUVs and trucks subject to the same regulations as cars
(though such regulations would
vastly improve SUV product quality and gas mileage, which would be a
good thing). That would increase the price but wouldn't change the
pyschology. It's like when young hockey players were required to wear
helmets, face guards and neck braces: Injury rates actually rose,
because players suddenly felt safer taking more risks, and became
careless, even aggressive, with elbows and sticks, feeling like they
and their adversaries were immune to harm with all the padding.
Gladwell ascribes the insatiable passion for control and safety and
invincibility to a syndrome called Learned Helplessness. The syndrome
reinforces the exaggerated feeling of lack of control, of enormous
danger, of inability to respond to danger, by repeated exposure to
actual or apparent threats:
"Learned Helplessness is now
thought to play a role in such phenomena as depression and the failure
of battered women to leave their husbands, but one could easily apply
it more widely. We live in an age, after all, that is strangely fixated
on the idea of helplessness: we're fascinated by hurricanes and
terrorist acts and epidemics like SARS -- situations in which we feel
powerless to affect our own destiny. In fact, the risks posed to life and limb by forces outside our control are dwarfed by the factors we can control. Our fixation with helplessness distorts our perceptions of risk."
Two years ago, millions of cows were slaughtered to contain a 'mad cow'
breakout in Britain, and recent events in North America have whipped up
the hysteria again, on the offchance
that a small number of people could catch a rare form of CJD from
infected cows. This week in China tens of thousands of wild civets are
being slaughtered because someone thinks they might
be connected with one new SARS case there. And as Gladwell reports,
three years ago the greatest auto industry scandal in decades brought
Firestone to its knees due to 271 tire failures in 630 billion tire miles, possibly contributing to a mere 0.00005% of auto accidents in the US that year.
Gladwell leaves it at that, but the reader's mind cannot. The reality
is that this delusion of danger, and the illusion that something can or
has to be done, that someone -- British cows, Canadian farmers, Chinese
cats, Firestone, Saddam Hussein -- must be brought to account in order
to give us back control, is literally making us all crazy. It causes us
to believe we cannot let children out of our sight even for a moment.
It causes us to wildly change our diets, to avoid visiting whole
countries, to fingerprint whole nations of visitors, to suspend civil
liberties, to put barbed wire around our communities, to drink only
bottled water, to wear masks, to introduce five levels of increasingly
hysterical 'threat' to everyone's safety.
It is irrational, neurotic, panic-stricken behaviour, a wild
over-reaction to a tiny uncontrollable risk while we recklessly
disregard risks we could control
and which kill and destroy lives in large numbers everyday -- air and
water pollution, tainted food from corrupt and underregulated meat
packers, drugs in sport and airplane cockpits, drunk drivers, kids with
guns, corporate frauds, a prison system that incarcerates the mentally
ill and encourages criminal recidivism -- and on and on and on.
Unfortunately, it is also in the best interest of the media and
governments to focus on the uncontrollable
risks, and to pander to public fear and fascination with them. They're
more sensational, more visceral. And since there's really nothing that
can be done about them, you can do anything, or nothing, in response to them, and not be held accountable, or responsible. The risks we could
control, on the other hand, are mundane, day-to-day, hard and expensive
but not impossible to remedy, would if remedied save thousands of
lives, and is the responsibility of all of us. Viewers, voters, and
consumers don't like to think about such things. Messy. Complicated.
Nagging. Costly. And the media, and politicians, are glad to oblige.
P.S.: The reason you
never see photos of the esteemed Mr. Gladwell, he of the Tipping Point,
is that he is only 39, and looks younger. His credibility demands we
think of him as older. Besides which, he's (shhh -- don't tell anyone)
a Canadian. Also, this week's New Yorker also has a great article that
is, at least for now, online: James Surowiecki's summary of war profiteering in Iraq
and the insanity and cost of outsourcing 'non-core' competency military
activities to Bush's buddies (oops, I mean, to the private sector).
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