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The war being waged on 4x4s and their occupants is becoming more intense, ugly and devious. I'm not going to give it the oxygen of publicity by naming it, but the organisation that's been formed to object to SUVs being used on urban roads is resorting to tactics which are highly provocative and possibly even illegal. And the abusive words spewing from the mouths of this new direct action group, and other self-proclaimed environmentalists, are becoming more unreasonable and extreme.

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By Mike Rutherford

08th February 2005

I took part in a BBC Watchdog programme with these people. I listened to their over-simplistic arguments and witnessed their bullying tactics, and concluded if they're really interested in the fact that there's limited road space, they'd be asking why a bus occupies so much of that valuable space whether it's full or - more often than not - half empty.

How come there's an obsession with pollution from 4x4s (some of which can return 40-50mpg) when under-occupied bus exhaust pipes are massively polluting? And why are other types of transport ignored? These are the reasonable questions the fundamentalists don't address. Instead, they make misleading generalisations which are beamed into people's homes on prime-time TV; statements such as: "4x4s are more polluting than other cars. They contribute to climate change at a far greater level and they're very unsafe."
On the very same Watchdog programme, another hater of all-wheel-drive vehicles claimed 4x4s were "drowning people out of their homes, drying up the drought zones of the world and killing people in very large numbers". The implication was that no SUVs means no floods, no droughts, no deaths. Utterly absurd.

For my part, I managed to say on air that if anyone is serious about tackling the problem of traffic-related deaths and injuries, vehicle pollution and lack of road space, then the discussion needs to be widened. It needs to encompass all the people and veh-icles responsible for such issues. SUVs make up a tiny part of the big picture. I also pointed out that many 4x4s occupy less space, drink less fuel, pump out fewer emissions and perform better in pedestrian or vehicle-to-vehicle collisions than some family cars.

And if these SUV-hating activists have a problem with 4x4s, then they also have a problem with sleeker family motors, don't they? You might think not, but the answer is yes. If you caught the Watchdog programme, you might have seen protesters putting their fake 'parking tickets' on the windscreens of cars that were very obviously Land Rovers and Jeeps. These documents say, among other things, that it "ought to be a criminal offence to drive" in certain types of perfectly legal, taxed and insured vehicles.

Since they raise the question of law-breaking, why aren't police nicking protesters who ambush drivers, obstruct vehicles, interfere with free-flowing traffic or even touch other people's valuable cars, which they have no right to put their hands on?

After studying a recording of the Watchdog programme, and playing it back in slow-motion, I saw at least one woman driving a family car being accosted by two protesters, one of whom was wearing an official-looking uniform that was anything but.