High and Mighty: SUVs — The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got that Way

Although written by a former Detroit bureau chief of The New York Times, this book uses high-octane rhetoric to challenge the value of sport utility vehicles when they were just beginning to reach the peak of their popularity.

One chapter sheds light on how SUVs were purposely given a menacing, Mad Max look as a result of market research that focused on appealing to the public’s reptilian instinct for survival (pp. 94-123).

In discussing the relatively low gas mileage of SUVs, High and Mighty offers as context this fun fact: “automobiles in the United States account for 4 percent of the entire world’s emissions of manmade greenhouse gases. If American automobiles were a separate country, their emissions would exceed those of every country except the United States, China, Russia and Japan” (p. 248).

Greg Easterbrook (2003) described High and Mighty as a “masterpiece” that “belongs on the same shelf as Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (1966) and Ida Tarbell’s The History of Standard Oil” (2015). However, Car and Driver’s Brock Yates dismissed Bradsher’s “fulminations” as going to the “edge of sanity” (2003).

High and Mighty: SUVs — The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got that Way

• Keith Bradsher; 2002
• Public Affairs, New York, NY

“When it comes to specific vehicles, the Dodge Durango comes closest to fitting Rapaille’s Hobbesian view of life as nasty, brutish and short. The Durango’s front end is intended to resemble the face of a savage jungle cat, said Rapaille. The vertical bars across the grille represent teeth, and the vehicle has bulging fenders over the wheels that look like clenched muscles in a savage jaw.” (p. 99)

“Safety experts agree that the death rate in SUVs would be considerably higher than in cars if the SUVs were not able to use their weight advantage in multi vehicle collisions to offset their high death rate in rollovers.” (p. 170)

“The Explorer junket reflected two media trends that have fed the SUV boom over the last two decades. Published reviews of new models too often include detailed assessments of off-road driving features that virtually no one needs. At the same time, automakers have warmly and lavishly embraced the media in ways that sometimes make it difficult for reporters to maintain objectivity. Indeed, while banks and brokerages sometimes entertain reporters at very expensive restaurants in New York, no other industry comes remotely close to wining and dining reporters to the extent that automakers do.” (p. 275)

OTHER REVIEWS:

The New York Times | Paul Ruschmann | Reasons and Opinions | Houston Chronicle | Amazon | Goodreads

---

RE:SOURCES

• Easterbrook, Greg; 2003. “Axle of Evil.” The New Republic. Posted Jan. 20; accessed, March 20, 2013.
• Nader, Ralph; 1966. Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.
• Tarbell, Ida; 2015. The History of the Standard Oil Company (all volumes). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
• Yates, Brock; 2003. “Save the Earth Drive an SUV!” Car and Driver. Posted May; accessed March 20, 2013.