Why I Drive A Toyota 4Runner SUV (Page 2)

By Jim on May 25th, 2008

I also feel a lot more secure driving it than I did with my Saturn.

I was down in MA one day a while back and my mother was with me. She was in the passenger seat. We were driving down a road, through and industrial park and had a terrible scare. As we were passing an intersection, an 18 wheeler went right through a stop sign and came hurtling at my mother’s side of my 4Runner. I saw him and hit the gas, cutting the wheel to the left and just barely zipping out of the path of his truck.

I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d been in my Saturn which simply did not have the same acceleration ability as my 4runner. I believe that if I had not been driving my 4Runner, my mother would probably be dead or severely injured. Although my 4Runner is a tough vehicle, I am not sure how it would have held up after being hit broadside by an 18 wheeler.

So for those of you out there who wonder why people drive SUVs, those are my reasons. I owe you no explanation, of course, but it irritates me when I read so many ignorant comments on other sites from people who hate SUV owners.

And just so you know, I am not getting rid of my 4Runner any time soon. No, I don’t like these high gas prices but I still prefer to have the utility value and safety of my 4Runner rather than paying through the nose (sorry but the hybrids seem way overpriced to me) for a tiny, unsafe, on-road only vehicle.

I am hoping that at some point Toyota will do a hybrid version of the 4Runner but I will only buy it if it doesn’t lose any features and if the price is around the same as for a non-hybrid. If they remove any of its capabilities to get better gas mileage then I wouldn’t buy one. Nor will I pay an extra $10,000 – $15,000 for a hybrid.