PLEASE stop bashing the SUV owners.  Some of us really need an SUV.  How else would my husband take our two dogs on his annual hunting trip without the space to haul them (and him) safely? The last thing I want to worry about is their safety on that trip. How else would we take them to the dog park  without them ripping up the interior of our VW Passat (which we drive almost exclusively) with their toenails?  How else would we haul bricks, lumber, plants from the garden center, etc.?  How else would we go on a family "adventure" all together in one vehicle?  Especially when driving many people halfway across the country in comfort (and SAFETY) to visit family?  When these events are not taking place, that "cursed" SUV sits in our driveway.  The last place I want to drive it to is the grocery store where, yes, it is a pain to park.  Our SUV is not a status symbol, it is a convenience based on the above statements. Oh, and yes, we DO eat all of the pheasants my husband brings home from his hunting trips. Oh, and yes again, we almost fight over who is going to drive the VW Passat when it is needed.

I live in Miami - a city of extremes - Fisher Island et al or Liberty City -et al. Miami has been written up in several nasty categories: road rage - most expensive housing - poorest population - low salary so  3 jobs to keep up and pay the bills, and, as an "import" commented, Miami's economy is crediit. Everyone lives on credit. When gas shot up in price, the streets were deserted. Most of what was traveling were SUV's and commercial vehicles. It seems people are getting over the sticker shock and more cars are venturing out, actually a high priced restaurant named Christy's had a waiting line snaking along the sidewalk this past Saturday night. But then these wouldn't be Wal-Mart patrons. Those are returning to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mejico, etc. Americans are applying f or food stamps in lines which match those on tv for voters this election. IMO, Wal-mart was always an expensive store who discounted 3 cents or 8 cents on an item but it's profits were 200 percent minimum. I believe you get better value, for the same product, at Dollar Stores. Arkansas' Sam Walton's son's are rich now, employees are exploited, and the aisles are emptying out? Isn't it about time? I never understood the appeal of Wal-Mart. My purchases there have been only because they were open later than their competition.Food stamps test the financial status of the USA, not an international conglomerate.

Ruba, I drive a Mazda Protege (smaller than a Passat) and I have two dogs, not tiny purse dogs, they ride comfortably in the back seat.  If your dogs are scratching your upholstry, you might try cutting their nails.

Crossover vehicles, long popular in Europe and now making their way over here, fill the bill nicely for those with kids or dogs. Most of the time, my car is a slightly elevated station wagon. When I'm driving a carload of kids, the hatch disappears and a third row pops up. Inversely, when my husband needs to haul something, the passenger row goes down, giving him ample room.

Wow.  That's a lot of hostility from SUV drivers.  I'm guessing you guys are taking a lot of flack in the real world over your vehicles of choice, right?  Because nothing Donna wrote deserves this level of vitriol.  A car should get you safely from point A to point B in a reasonably efficient fashion.  If you choose to see it as anything more than that, just be comfortable with your purchase and get over what everyone else thinks.

And to people like Ruba, there are quite a few vehicle options out there that adequately haul and have better safety ratings than tippy SUVs.  I've gone on some nice cross country trips in a few of them and hauled things around in others.  

I is under $2.00 gallon right here in Il. I do not know about all of you.

I  drive a mazda 626  as a daily driver back and forth to work  on most days  to my job some 30 miles away on a long stretch of desolate 2 lane highway ....on ocassion I drive my second vehicle ...a turbo-diesel powered  ford  pick up truck ...any rude SUV drivers I encounter are going to be rude no matter what you drive, but driving a vehicle larger than what they drive does tend to intimidate them to some degree.

Road rage.....it's payback time...it is a challenge to keep those feelings in check when now you have a bigger and  more powerful vehicle than they have after having been bullied around driving the smaller car.....but I still drive the small car most of the time laughing all the way to the gas pump listening to the SUVers belly aching  about how much it is killing them to fill their tanks.

My SUV has saved me overall more money than I would've spent to outsource hauling the stuff I needed to. Bought it used, too, so I guess that would be where I'm doing the recycling duty? It's got the same engine as a sedan, it's just a different carcasse. A car is a tool, a means to an end and that's what I treat mine like. I've gotten so much financial satisfaction out of it. It saved me so much trouble.

I do agree though that some people are misunderstanding the Return On Investment concept when it comes to cars, going emotional about it.

Grew up in Europe, there's no fun in driving cars the SMART size ( talk about emotions). Europe's got centuries old infrastructure. OK, there are highways and new neighboorhoods being built, but I'm guessing the car size issue comes form the fact that the roads cannot be adjusted to ensure safety. And, there's no fun smelling like diesel exhaust the minute you walk out the door, fresh after you took a shower to go to work.

I, for one, plan on doing all the right things to keep optimum gas mileage on the SUV I have and fully enjoy the benefits at the time. I think people are really scared to see their 401(k)s go down by 50 %, seriously, you really think they'll go back up any time soon? So, don't expect spending to go up either. I think these times will be a splash of harsh but well timed reality in the face of 20 somethings, that should shape up a better future. I might be wrong, but it works perfectly for me, learning some really good stuff these days.

I wish congress would pass a law tomorrow that adds $3 per gallon on gas.  That's right; add $3 per gallon on gas.  In the same sentence of the law, they shall refund every family $2000 for a single person, $4000 for a couple.

Oil is not an abundant resource of our country, therefore it should be used wisely.  With the tax, people will use gas wisely and buy fuel efficient cars, thus cause gas prices to dop. We can reduce our national consumption to nearly what we can produce domestically.  We no longer care about what OPEC, Iran, Russia or anyone else does with oil.  We would minimize the need to go to war for oil.  

In the mean time, we allow alternative energy technology to improve and switch to that once we run out of our own oil.

Regretfully, I must agree.  In my lifetime, as other countries where energy has always been expensive, conserved, we became the land of multiple garage doors.  Further, we've had an attitude of entitlement to cheap energy, and did what we thought we had to do in order to get it, including using our military.  

While I think weaning us off foreign oil should be a high priority, at the same time, I don't think "drill Baby drill" is the answer Sarah Palin thinks it is. If we pursue that route, I believe five years from now, we'll be right back where we are now, but the domestic sources of oil will be pretty well gone.  Expensive gas has the benefit of forcing folks to do what they otherwise see no need to do, but in the long run, may be beneficial.

Japan, a well developed nation where gas is expensive, has well developed passenger railways, more bicycles and walkers (and smaller waistlines), and they drove Honda Fits and Toyota Yaris long before they came here.  We could learn from them.