When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I had to buy a new car because I only had a three door hatch and there was no way I was going to maneuver myself over the front seat to get the baby in and out. I had a few options. Get the same size zippy car in a five door hatch, buy a larger sedan or station wagon or get a 4wd. I chose option number one. Why would I spend more money on a massive car and more money on rego and insurance when a giant car is superfluous to my needs right now?
I rarely get out on the road without incident; without someone cutting me off, or sitting close to my behind, or overtaking me aggressively, or running a red light, or misusing a roundabout, or not indicating, or parking crookedly, or flying past me when I'm sure I'm doing the speed limit. Often, the offender is in a huge 4wd. Well it seems that way anyway. I started to resent these people, especially if they had the stick figure stickers on the back of their car to describe their family unit. I prefer this sticker:
This summer, my family - my husband and I and our baby, went to the beach a fair bit. Living on the Northern Beaches of Sydney means we are close to the sea and we can commit to a whole day at the beach without being deterred by a long car trip to and from the beach on a hot day. So when we make a day of it, we take stuff to see us through the day and with a baby we had a bit of extra stuff to take along - namely the pram, nappy bag and her floating turtle seat thingy. Not too much extra. Her food (mainly my boob) fit into a small cooler bag in our esky (not my boob, I don't put my boob in the esky). Our tent and chairs are pretty compact. Towels and clothes occupy one bag. We can fit ourselves and our stuff pretty easily into my car, a Mazda 2.
My car is the one with the baby capsule attachment so we have to take my car out when we travel as a family and so far we haven't had any trouble fitting everything in. We do our grocery shopping each week with no trouble - the boot fits the pram and grocery bags easily. We even traveled by car to Melbourne for a week over Xmas and the three of us and our stuff for the week fit in easily. I guess you adapt. You learn to take what fits and what you need without over packing. However, we have started to consider the future, especially when we notice that the majority of families we see out and about drive a big 4wd. What if our family grows and we have another child or get a dog? What if our activities change and we need to take equipment with us like snow gear or bikes? How much can you pack into and strap onto a 5 door hatch back and still be comfortable and safe inside?
So I started to look around for some research into the use and safety of urban 4wds. I wanted to either justify or eliminate my resentment and understand the reality of why sales of 4wds has continued to increase over the last couple of decades, despite tariffs, penalties and increases in petrol prices that should deter people, but don't. One study seems to think that this has made no difference to the people who buy 4wds; they can either afford it or the expense increase is minimal compared to the benefits of having a big people mover, because that is what they are usually used for in the suburbs, to transport people. And their stuff.
I found this page really interesting. Four Wheel Drive Australia is an organisation that advocates for the 4wd 'community' and presents information to distinguish the facts from the myths. When I first clicked the link I honestly thought 'here we go, bias city'. I was wrong. The information is really eye opening and in comparison to sedans, it appears that 4wds have sometimes been demonised unnecessarily. The site is incredibly thorough and gives people resources and information to contribute to the safe and responsible use of these cars in an urban area as well as 'off road'. This site argues that the people buying 4wds have been unfairly labelled - often really irrationally - by the media, promoting the perception that the large cars are dangerous and damaging to the environment. They can be, but so can any car, they say. It is about looking at the facts and the reality of how these cars are used or misused and what factors contribute to harm to passengers, pedestrians and the environment. This organisation appears to be one really positive step towards ensuring people are informed and equipped to properly operate and get the best possible use of these vehicles for their needs and if those who own 4wds use them properly, it also ensures safety and convenience for the rest of us who don't want or need to have such a huge car.
This study concluded that:
"Urban dwellers are voting with their wallets and purchasing flexible and safe (for the occupants) vehicles, 4wds, in record numbers. They are often used as substitutes for people movers, being used 25% of the time to ferry passengers around. Indeed, one in five couple households in Sydney with young children owns a 4wd. The types of households owning these 4wds are wealthy enough not to worry unduly about moderate pricing measures to alter their choices – significant price incentives (or penalties) would likely be required to encourage a behavioural shift towards vehicle types more acceptable in a safety and environmental perspective to the community as a whole. The tariff equalisation program and the current trend in petrol prices are likely to have an impact, but maybe not a large one. Current station-wagon-like people movers such as Honda Odyssey and Holden Zafira offer safety and environmental advantages over many types of 4wd vehicles in urban areas while retaining much of the flexibility and carrying ability that 4wd users require. Are there any other options? Well, it may surprise to learn that there is no strong evidence for 4wd owning households using public transport more or less than other households. Thus, methods to encourage greater use of public transport by 4wd owners may be as successful as with any other households in the population. In addition, households owning 4wds are almost twice as likely to own adult bicycles than other households (.9 of a bike per household vs .5 of a bike for non-4wd households), perhaps indicating more active lifestyle, but also perhaps another reason for the 4wd purchase – for carrying bikes." Tim Raimond, Transport and Population Data Centre, NSW Dept of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources
It was so interesting to me to consider that the people I see driving around in these giant cars, may actually need them to transport their kids and their kids' belongings, their shopping, their equipment such as prams, bikes, skate boards, pets, scooters, sporting equipment, clothes, food, pillows and blankets and whatever else they needed that particular day, or weekend, or indeed longer if they were going on holidays. It also got me thinking that perhaps it was the infrastructure that needs to evolve quicker to accommodate the shifting needs of families. Maybe we need wider roads, bigger and more abundant parking spaces, better systems of public transport and better bike lanes/routes. The other side to that is that maybe we need a shift in culture too. Maybe we need to think about our reliance on cars, especially in a place like Sydney. Everywhere is distant, we have to drive to most places, in particular to work. What incentives do we have to stay local to our area? What services and facilities are available in each suburb to cater for the demographic? How can we adapt our lives generally to need less commodities, to live simpler and more efficiently? How can we learn to enjoy a world and lifestyle that is slower, less complicated with "things" and "objects" to gratify us as opposed to connecting again with each other and our natural world and accessing that which is available to us easily and without fuss? It seems we spend much more time and money equipping ourselves and getting to the activity than actually doing said activity!
In fact when I read this study from Monash University, it really put some things in perspective. It looked at the age of the driver, their gender and their location. It also took into consideration the age of the vehicle and the technology it possessed as well as the distances it traveled, which made speed and the condition of the road a contributing factor. So for example what is the difference between a driver who is a young male in an old ute or jeep flying down a country road for work compared to a mature parent who has been driving for years in a brand new 4wd with all the mod cons, dropping their kids off at the local school and doing the shopping, driving mainly short distances in a 60km zone?
The study used NZ and Australian statistics and concluded that particularly in NZ, 4wds had a lower crash risk compared to other classes of vehicles when driven in urban areas. Both Australian and NZ studies in the past had shown that 4wds were more likely to protect the occupants of the vehicle in a crash, but there was a higher risk of serious injury to other drivers when they collided - this is referred to as aggressivity. Despite 4wds having higher aggressivity, they had a lower risk of collision depending on how they were used, ie. for shorter distances at lower speeds (say by families in an urban environment) compared to long distances and higher speeds (say by young males in a work capacity in rural areas). The study also found that the most dangerous vehicles by far were sports cars driven by young males in the country side. The study did find that 4wds were more prone to rolling than other vehicles and were more likely to kill the passenger if it did roll, but again this was more likely to happen at high speeds on longer distances, especially if driven by inexperienced drivers and in older vehicles.
So what does this all mean to me? Maybe I have something similar to small dog syndrome. Small dogs are wonderful when left alone; they're low maintenance, they do small shits, they don't eat much and you can put them in your hand bag. They also bark a lot, at everything, including really big dogs, because they are always shit scared and on high alert. They live on a knife's edge and are forever feeling threatened and defensive, feeling the desire to bark loudly and puff out their chests and bare their teeth as a warning and a mechanism for self protection. They are fucking annoying.
I'm in a small car. I love my small car. It's easy to park, it's fuel efficient and compact, but when I'm surrounded by really big cars, they feel aggressive and over bearing to me. I feel suffocated, closed in when they're behind, in front and on either side of me. They always appear to be going really fast and coming up to me really close. Perhaps it isn't just a perception. They do tend to promote a false sense of security and a confidence in their drivers bordering on aggression because of their girth, but by the looks of this research, perhaps the sense of security is justified as you're definitely going to come out better off if you crash into someone and you're protected by a big metal box instead of a smaller one. My fear gives me the need to bark and I'm starting to think I might be annoying like the small dogs; maybe only if I whinged about 4wds to their drivers' faces. I'm intimidated on the road by bigger cars. Sometimes it's in my mind, sometimes it isn't. I reckon there is definitely a whole lot of bullying going on on our roads by people in big cars - whether they are 4wds, or big yutes, or trucks, or buses. The thing is the vehicles don't drive themselves. People do the driving and they do the bullying too.
When I started to write this I was definitely vehemently opposed to ever owning a 4wd while I lived in the suburbs and I absolutely had the shits at people who do. Although I feel like I am growing out of my little hatch, as I am no longer a single young woman, zipping around the place in nothing short of a roller skate; I still think that I can manage my expanding spacial requirements that having kids causes, by upgrading to the next still compact level - perhaps option number two, a larger 4 door sedan or a station wagon. They do make 4wds in a more compact version though, so after doing just a bit of research, that is now an option I am willing to consider if we have another baby or get a dog or if I join my husband on the snow fields (which is highly unlikely to require me to buy equipment as the best maneuver I can manage in the snow is just a really awesome snow angel).
I can now appreciate that some people have the need for a larger car to cater for their family sizes and their activities and that these people aren't out to kill me. I also understand that some of the intimidation I feel might be self imposed because I have resisted surrendering my discreet place in the world as an invisible single woman living in harmony with the still and silent. I'm starting to get the 'if you can't beat them join them' mentality. It's a little bit more reassuring to have discovered that in urban areas, there may be less opportunity for 4wds to do a lot of damage because they are not going to be driving very fast or over long distances and they're likely to be driven by more experienced drivers, but that's referring to damage to themselves, the 4wders. It doesn't erase the fact that in my little car, with my baby on board (and a big fucking sign declaring it, in lieu of the stick figure family shit), if I were to collide with a 4wd, I'm going to come off second best - the sheer terror, the horror of the thought keeps me awake at night.
I'm probably going to buy a 4wd.
But it won't be a Jeep. Just because of that fucking ad where the wife goes 'I bought a Jeep' and the husband is so chuffed that she bought a man's car that he gets a boner because she upgraded to masculinity and legitimacy instead of being a pussy and buying a Mazda 2. Maybe I'll just get a Mazda 3, in a station wagon.
Epilogue
I conceived twins and we bought a 4wd - a Mazda CX5. We had to, we simply had no choice because we had to have a vehicle that would fit three children (at the moment it's two capsules and a seat, eventually it will be three seats) in the back seat. I must say it is a dream to drive and my experience on the road has been vastly different to that whilst driving a little hatch back. I'm definitely more confident on the road because I sit higher and the car is bigger, but the biggest difference is how others drive near me; or at least my perception of other drivers. I don't feel as bullied. I don't feel as overwhelmed by bigger cars because I am one of them. I still drive like a nanna, in the left lane, not much over taking, sitting just below the speed limit if it's safe to do so, making very thought out decisions to make my trip more efficient with the safety of my babies paramount in my mind, like changing lanes or over taking. I don't feel defensive anymore. I'm not a barking little dog anymore. I think I'm a big dog now. Well at least medium sized. There are still truckies and bus drivers to contend with and I've already nearly had my mirror swiped off by a passing bus as I sat at the traffic lights; on my way to hospital pregnant with the twins. Bottom line; I'm a convert. Necessity won and I'm not at all unhappy about it.
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