In the news

2.5 tonne cars help in snow do they?

He did mention coming in from Aberfoyle - that place can be snowed in in the winter and the roads are pretty steep and winding in parts.

No but four wheel drive does

@EB +kl fair enough, I've only been to Dunfermline briefly, and know not of the weather up there.

Just sounded a bit "of course I need a Land Rover, I have 2 children I need to take to school when the nanny has a day off, and it is nearly a three quarters of a mile round trip"

I'm being facetious. Although small and 4WD are not mutually exclusive.
It's a very British/American attitude that if you see snow, you need a landrover.
and FWD will do pretty well until conditions are extreme.
Plenty of people in Siberia with far worse conditions than Glasgow that are still driving little 70s hatchbacks just fine

I'm not excusing his choice of car btw, just clearing up the question of what roads he's on. I used to frequent that area regularly in winter in an old Skoda Fabia with a couple of mountain bikes in the back and it did just fine.

just fine

I'm not saying you are wrong, but a significant chunk of YouTube appears to disagree with this assessment.

"Tory MP who said Marcus Rashford should stick to his day job has second job"

Ms Elphicke, you're a dick.

https://youtu.be/gBq4e8y1GoA?t=65

No but four wheel drive does

Make very little difference if it have normal tyres tho.

Put winter tyres on a hatchback and it'll actually perform well if not better than a SUV with normal tyres.

(CSB, my dad's 4WD car slid and scratch the entire passenger side when going down a 25% driveway while my mum's second hand Skoda Citigo with winter tyres happily climb down).

Just sounded a bit "of course I need a Land Rover, I have 2 children I need to take to school when the nanny has a day off, and it is nearly a three quarters of a mile round trip"

No it didn't -
"I have to get to my patients - fortunately I wasn't that late for work but if I hadn't had a pump I could have been hours late.
"The knock-on effect of that could be quite significant. We could have a lot of antibiotics needing given out, we've got palliative care patients that need access to care at end of life."

Not sure how you can really tell me how I read a paragraph by posting a different one, but you do you.

I find it really annoying when 'activists' target SUVs especially, as with that campaign promise in London's Mayoral election years ago. (I think it may have been 2012.) It's a classic case of bad, short-sighted campaigning, implicitly showing that non-SUV cars, which are far more numerous, are not such a problem, and completely messing up the message that the problem is automobilism itself, not your choice of car. Changing cars would require very minor changes and would still be extremely polluting and have all the other attendant problems, whereas addressing automobilism would require very major changes to everyone's general lifestyle, which is what is needed--but 'activists' like that then fail to address that by engaging in completely futile headline-grabbing stunts like that.

I'm inclined to agree Oliver.

I also think a lot of people don't realise that some SUVs have much more efficient engines than small cars.

When we switched from a 2015 Fiesta to a 2017 Seat Ateca with same sized engine, our fuel consumption and emissions dropped by about 20%. Not saying that'll save the world, just that you can't always judge a book by its cover.

Put that engine in a small slippery car though and it will drop further…

'activists'

BBC needs a word with itself for using this word in this context I think.

Dickheads might have been appropriate

Fair point.

I have always been of the opinion that people who drive SUV’s are cunts.

Over the years, I have saved a great deal of time that way.

I now know, thanks to this forum, that SUV drivers are in fact eco/ warriors.

I have also learned that people like me, ideologically opposed to SUV drivers are, and presumably always have been, cunts.

Every day is a school day.

I think that’s what Karl Marx was banging on about when he wrote ‘all that’s solid melts into air’.

I've just traded all my bikes in for an SUV. #amidoingitright?

The distinguishing feature of "SUVs" is a tall square grill, which do much more damage to pedestrians.

Shoulda bought E-SUV bike

So is it the type of vehicle or the way it's propelled that's the problem? Sorry if I've missed something...

Both.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/07/a-deadly-problem-should-we-ban-suvs-from-our-cities

On order.

fuel consumption and emissions dropped by about 20%.

The other contribution factor is the weight and sizes, it does more damage to the road, and may emitted more rubber and brakes pollution.