The Story Behind The SUV: Media Flair On Accidents Involving Sports Utility Vehicles

Those gas guzzling, road hogging auto mammoths. So many people own them for their storage capacity and the number of passengers that can fit inside the roomy interior. But did you know they may have a mind of their own when it comes to auto accidents?

In Manhattan, today's news reported that an SUV Crashes Into Two Houses. Further down in the report, the female driver was said to be intoxicated. A few days ago at a Manhattan restaurant, an SUV crashed into the eating establishment, but this time the news source, The Daily News, reported that:

An SUV jumped a sidewalk Sunday and crashed into the patio window of a crowded upper West Side restaurant, sending terrified diners diving for cover, cops said.

In that crash, the vehicle was carrying a foreign dignitary in New York on a funding mission. No one was severely injured in the crash where the SUV was reported to have "jumped" and "crashed", although seven passengers from two vehicles were treated for minor injuries, including Senator Cemethyse Gilles, of Haiti. However, there was no mention of a driver in the report. A recent accident in Tennessee that proved fatal for four young highschool cheerleaders was reported in some headlines as SUV Crash Kills Four Cheerleaders. The SUV collided with an oncoming car in this accident. And earlier this month in Bellevue, WA, an SUV crashed through an apartment and landed in a kitchen. In this report, there is some driver responsibility. These road-hogs seem to be independently plowing into dentist offices, college campus residencies and even into gas pumps. But the question is why are SUVs given a status of being an animate object, portrayed as something out of Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive? Although the smaller forms of lifeless metal, plastic and rubber are given life in some articles, accidents involving cars are more inclined to have a real driver at the wheel. For example, a Florida woman died when a motorist ran a stop sign. It is also more likely to see headlines stating an individual died in an accident without laying blame on a specified vehicle when the vehicle involved is not an SUV. When the CEO of Pininfarina was killed while riding his motor scooter earlier this year, the headlines did not speak of a car killing the Italian designer, but rather that his life was taken in a road accident.. Morgan Freeman was injured earlier this year in a car accident. Even cars are known to do their own form of plowing into apartments but typically, drivers are reported to be at fault. SUVs, for some reason, lack human responsibility in many cases. Why could that be? As they say, things that make you go "mmmmmm."