Product Description

The longtime Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times lays bare the dangers posed by the most popular type of American family car: the sport utility vehicle. . SUVs have taken over America's roads. Ad campaigns promote them as safer and "greener" than ordinary cars and easy to handle in bad weather. But very little about the SUV's image is accurate. They poorly protect occupants and inflict horrific damage in crashes, they guzzle gasoline, and they are hard to control. Keith Bradsher has been at the forefront in reporting the calamitous safety and environmental record of SUVs, including the notorious Ford-Firestone rollover controversy. In High and Mighty, he traces the checkered history of SUVs, showing how they came to be classified not as passenger cars but as light trucks, which are subject to less strict regulations on safety, gas mileage, and air pollution. He makes a powerful case that these vehicles are even worse than we suspect-for their occupants, for other motorists, for pedestrians and for the planet itself. In the tradition of Unsafe at Any Speed and Fast Food Nation, Bradsher's book is a damning expos of an industry that puts us all at risk, whether we recognize it or not.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1475698 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09
• Released on: 2002-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

From Library Journal
Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) have become the fastest-growing market segment in the automobile industry. They have an image of being safer and easier to handle in bad weather than traditional passenger cars. But in this new expos , New York Times reporter Bradsher delivers sobering facts about the conveyances: they protect occupants poorly, inflict horrific damage in crashes, guzzle gasoline, spew emissions, and are, in fact, difficult to control in bad weather or panic situations. He traces the checkered past of SUVs and how they came to be classified not as cars but as light trucks, which are subject to softer federal regulations regarding safety, gas mileage, and air pollution. The recent recall of tires and SUVs by Ford and Firestone after scores of roll-over deaths is apparently only the tip of the iceberg. Bradsher makes a powerful case that SUVs are inflicting great damage on their occupants, other motorists, pedestrians, and the earth. While the information has been available for some time in bits and pieces, this book is the first to put it all together with documented facts and figures. In the tradition of Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, this should be read by drivers of SUVs and all those who must share the roads with them.
Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The behemoths among autos, SUVs are dangerous gas-guzzlers exempted from the safety and environmental rules that apply to other autos because they are classified as light trucks. Bradsher, an award-winning journalist who reported on the Ford-Firestone rollover controversy, details how SUVs came to enjoy such protection and such enormous popularity. From its precursor in the 1930s, favored by the funeral business, through the twist of fate that saw trade protection for frozen chickens morph into protection of SUV manufacturers, to the irony that the baby boom generation that championed environmental safety is also responsible for the huge popularity of the SUV, Bradsher offers compelling reading. The author interviewed the auto executives and engineers behind the SUV and documents the danger to occupants, other motorists, pedestrians, and the environment of a car model that continues to grow in size and heft. This fascinating history and troubling analysis of both the politics and the design of the SUV should appeal to readers on both sides of the debate. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"...Damned if Bradsher doesn't make a point. In fact a fusillade of points...[This is a] sobering, infuriating, necessary book." -- New York Times Book Review, October 6, 2002

"A chilling expos on the danger of SUVs." -- Toronto Globe and Mail, August 24, 2002

"An intelligent reader will conclude from this meticulous and sober investigation that the [SUV] makers...have exploited a lucrative market." -- Atlantic Monthly, October 2002

"Certain to raise public awareness of the many societal problems exacerbated by the proliferation of SUVs... a fascinating book." -- Toronto Star, September 23, 2002

"Dazzling...Bradsher writes with knowledge and confidence...A masterpiece of its kind, splendidly combining reporting, analysis, and indignation. " -- The New Republic, January 20, 2003.

"Not since [Nader] has there been such a critical look at the U.S. auto industry, or one that is more timely." -- John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 30, 2002

"The growing grass-roots movement against the sport-utility vehicle now has a bible." -- Washington Post, September 22, 2002

"[A] marvelously told book...How [the auto market] came undone is Bradsher's menacing story, and I think he has it cold..." -- New York Times, November 26, 2002

"superb for many reasons...fascinating historical material is presented with narrative panache...Every engaged citizen...ought to read this book." -- Newsday, October 6, 2002