by Kelley Farrell

Created on: October 24, 2007

Should Hummers be outlawed for road travel? I can see the environmental stance that someone would take, but personally I won't take that stance. A Hummer is a vehicle and people have the right to drive one if they so choose, although I've never grasped the reasoning behind wanting to drive one. Personally, I drive a small car and nothing frustrates me more than when those 4 to 6 bright lights zoom up on my tail and stay there, blinding me to the point that I consider slamming my breaks and letting the Hummer hit me just so I can give him a piece of my mind. Then again, Hummers have gotten so big that the driver may just run me over and not even notice.

I can somehow see the attraction behind a Hummer, perhaps the showing off of your wealth. Or, in some cases, the lack of your wealth. How many people put themselves into serious debt trying to afford one of the over-sized "SUV's"? Hummer's aren't exactly the cheapest thing on the market, in fact last time I checked their prices were in the ranges of new brand new luxury cars, think 30,000 to 60,000. Tack a car payment, with insurance and the gas bill onto the family finances and I'm sure you're looking at some serious money for the next 5-10 years. The luxury it affords you, I can see that as well, Hummers have come a long way from being tanks in the desert that had the bare minimum for soldiers to be comfortable while in one. In my opinion, they shouldn't have been put on the road though.

The size of Hummers are also debatable to me, does anyone really need something that big for everyday on the road driving? If you do need something big to accomodate a large family then buy a mini-van or, if that still isn't enough, buy a bus. At least then we will know the people driving the over-sized vehicles will have had special training and a special license to handle it. I can not count how many times I've seen people in Hummers, or any truck that's jacked up more than the law really allows, force it's way into traffic at the expense of everyone else.

I don't know if it's the "bigger is better" mentality that the U.S. has come to know and love, or if it's just people who feel they have to the right to be total jackasses to everyone else because of what they are driving. Unfortunately it is not just Hummers that I believe need to get off the road; it's every truck that has it's body jacked up so far off the wheels that you can see the underside without being under it, and every "SUV" that deserves to be called a monster truck instead.

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