Stepping away from my quest for the ultimate in ID/Religious irony humour (only for a while though), I thought I would address some “Bad Science” which is frequently raising its ugly head as part of the War on Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV) – also known as 4x4s here in blighty.
Now, for quite some time the eco warriors have been campaigning against what they see as gas guzzling monsters being used, unnecessarily, on the school run. This has been picked up by successive news agencies and turned into a bit of a campaign issue for some politicians (i.e. Ken Livingstone). Now, without debating the rights and wrongs of driving an SUV or heading down the road of is a 32mpg SUV worse than a 16 mpg sports car (interesting in itself as the SUV may be carrying 5 people compared to the two in the sports car…), or even if you can make a moral value call on something like ownership of a type of vehicle, I wanted to highlight the science involved.
Recently, there has been reporting about a study which found SUV drivers 55% less likely than car drivers to have their hands in the “10 to 2” position on the wheel, which it then goes on to describe as the sign of a “safe and alert” driver. This is an insane premise. Speaking as a car driver, I rarely, if ever, have my hands at “10 to 2” and have never caused an accident in my life. As it stands though, I have no idea if there is any research which supports the “safe” claim so I will not comment on it any further other than to say it is a premise which needs proving.
Now, in light of the research (which you can read about on New Scientist) I decided to carry out a bit of my own. For various reasons I spent 90 minutes in a roadside service station on the A1(M) in the north of England on Tuesday 10 Jan 07. During this time I was able to observe a lot of passing vehicles and as the road was very, very busy there was a wide mix of vehicle types. As part of my study, I observed the drivers of 100 passenger cars, 100 sports utility vehicles and 50 light goods vehicles. I only noted the ones where I could clearly see the top half of the steering wheel to confirm the drivers hand positions so there were more vehicles which passed without me making a note. This is a much smaller study group than the
Now, of the 100 SUVs which passed, only six had drivers with their hands at “10 to 2” (interestingly all were female), the rest had either one hand on top or both hands out of sight. Now, this is then compared to the “normal” cars out of which a grand total of four had their hands at “10 to 2.” Of these four, two were “young drivers” one of which still had a green P plate. Of the 50 LGV/vans I looked at none had their hands at “10 to 2.”
In addition, both SUVs and Cars had four people each who were using phones while driving (seven vans were), and two van drivers were driving without seatbelts (no cars or SUVs were as far as I could see).
As this is a small study group, I realise the numbers may be far from accurate, so yesterday (Wednesday, 11 Jan 07), I carried out a similar study (100 cars, 100 SUVs – no vans) from a service station on the M1 motorway. This time, five SUV drivers were observed with their hands at “10 to 2” with four car drivers again. This means approximately 5% of SUV drivers have their hands in that position compared to around 4% of car drivers. For the numbers to have matched those in the study, I should have been looking at around 2 SUV drivers for 4 car drivers.
This broadly matches my own experience of being a passenger in other people’s cars and other people’s SUVs. I know no car drivers, with more than about 12 – 18 months driving experience, who drive with their hands at “10 – 2.” From my personal experience, driving with your hands at “10 to 2” is not a reliable indicator of a safe and alert driver. It also strikes me as inaccurate to say SUV drivers are less likely to drive in the “10 to 2” position than a normal car – with the exception of new drivers are, in turn, less likely to drive an SUV than a car.
I am not sure if this is bad science, but it strikes me as just being part of the slightly obsessive (and occasionally irrational) desire to demonise drivers of SUV/4x4s. I remember a few months ago reading about how SUV/4x4s gave smaller fields of view than normal cars (due to the width of side pillars), yet this never accounted for the increased field of view from the size of the vehicle and hight of the driver. I am not trying to support the use of SUVs but I think arguing against it should be rational and logical.