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At the moment, BMW is pleased about a nice increase in the sales of its vehicles, 4.1 percent more could be sold last year. Over half of them were SUVs. The Germans love this type of car: in 2019, it is estimated that more than one million such vehicles will be registered for the first time.
In Berlin, the driver of a Porsche SUV drove at high speed onto a sidewalk. We do not know exactly why that happened. We do not know if the driver had a spasm or an epileptic seizure, so maybe he could not help it. All we know is that he killed four people, four pedestrians: two young men, one older woman. And a three-year-old boy. It is a terrible accident.
Can you take him as an opportunity to think about the meaning of these cars? "The instrumentalization of a terrible traffic accident and its dead marks a new low point in the debate about a change in traffic," says Ulf Poschardt, the "world" chief editor with gasoline in his blood. And his colleague Jan Fleischhauer from "Focus" uses the opportunity to push the harshest car critics to the brink of democracy: "The environmental aid has the hang of how to spin a tragic story so that a profit jumps out and in the end always the old enemy, I can not help but think green populism does not look much less disgusting than right. "
In the column Agitation and Propaganda Stefan Kuzmany writes about the current developments in politics and society. Subscribe to the newsletter directly and for free here:
Beautifully distracted and staged as a voice of reason: who now opposes SUV, the Greens and environmental aid, is no better than any rights that take every Islamist attack as a pretext to rush against all Muslims. However, this logic can only be followed by those who drive cars for a religion whose followers are subjected to the worst social defamation.
Of this, however, is little to notice in reality. No other industry in this country enjoys as much power and influence as the automotive industry. The car is still the most important status symbol of the Germans, it symbolizes German economic power. High-speed rides on German motorways are regarded as a noble expression of free personality development. And the SUV is the new favorite car of the Germans.
One can ask the question why this is so.
Utility and healthy lifestyle
SUV stands for "Sport Utility Vehicle", this brilliantly conceived concept of the auto industry claims utility and healthy lifestyle: The SUV driver is a sporty guy who needs such a big car because he has to be in, say, mountain bike stow to be able to roar quickly over the highway into the mountains, for physical exercise. It may be that there are actually people who use their SUV so, no one has met me yet.
In the media, the SUV is often called "city SUV". With this word we come closer to the absurdity of this car concept. For what is that supposed to be, a city SUV? There is no impassable terrain in cities, that's what makes the city a thoroughly humanized living space. There is also no legal way to reach the top speed of well over 200 kilometers per hour, which, for example, a Porsche Macan can afford. It also makes no sense in the city to be able to accelerate from zero to one hundred in less than ten seconds, nor as a power and safety reserve is such an engine power in inhabited areas necessary. In fact, such cars move through the cities like Obelix through his Gallic village: always in danger of inadvertently doing damage with their oversized power.
Well equipped by the traffic
I do not believe that - apart from perhaps the more than 1000 German vets specialized in livestock - someone buys such a car because of its theoretical off-road capability or generous storage space. It is bought mainly because it is safe. More precisely, the terrible accident in Berlin has shown once more: Safe for the inmates.
Well equipped, slightly elevated above the conventional road traffic, sealed soundproof and sprinkled inside with the finest stereo sound, the SUV driver glides in a high-security capsule through the environment out there. You are encapsulated in every car, but not in any SUV.
As a self-confessed bicycle helmet wearer, I do not like to admit it, but it's true what researchers at the University of Jena have found out: Anyone wearing a helmet tends to take a higher risk, he believes but protected. If that's true, then you can guess what triggers the actual all-round protection of an SUV passenger compartment in the brain of the person at the wheel: I can not help what. That's not an accusation. The metropolitan traffic, especially in Berlin, is aggressive up to the danger to life. Self-protection is too understandable.
The police will find out what exactly caused the accident in Berlin. Irrespective of this, and without any anger towards the driver as such, we must realize that things can not go on like this. We are too many who want to come too quickly from here to there. Consideration is a nice word, it does not matter in everyday life. We will need new rules. One of them might actually be to ban over-engineered armored capsules from the cities as a first step, because they are dangerous, polluting the environment and consuming space. Anyone who wants to go to town anyway should pay a high price, with money. Not the pedestrians with their lives.
What speaks against it? I would really care.
