I'd have to agree with I see way too many of these trucks being driven as if they were a prepared IT car. I think there's a false sense if invincibility present in at least some of those drivers.

By the same token, personal, anecdotal evidence would prove otherwise, based on the 20 or so crashes we've had directly in front of our house in the last year.

We live on a very twisty, hilly road. In the 5-mile length of the road, the curve at the corner of our property is probably the most dangerous. You crest a hill as you round the curve. The car lightens... Vehicles either end up sliding across the road into the corn field or overcorrecting once or twice and end up slapping the embankment at the bottom of the property.

Within probably a mile and a half, in each direction, is a "towny" bar. Think Bob's Country Bunker. The parking lot usually has several examples of the exact type of pickup to which you refer at any point between 10AM and 2AM.

Most cars just end up with some bent sheetmetal or stuck in the muck in the field. However, we have had three rollovers and probably a half dozen collisions with one of several telephone poles on the outside of the curve.

I don't recall any of these involving one of the big, lifted, or even stock pickups. The three rollovers have been an Integra, a Cobalt and Bonneville, the latter being driven by a girl with no license, insurance and expired registration.

This part of the country has more than it's share of big pickups with gun racks but I can't recall one ever ending up wrecked in the front yard.

Heck, I wrecked my M Coupe about five curves up the road while bedding in a set of Ferodos. I never wrecked my Ram.

I think bad drivers are in the drivers seat of every type of car. Maybe we just notice big, loud, lifted trucks more, especially from the seat of a MINI. From personal observation, I'd have to say that Saturn drivers seem to be the most unaware, most clueless, but that's just me.

 

Maybe the drunks in the pick-ups are not bothering with the pavement, and just going straight cross country!

 

I know all about the idiot truck drivers most around me are barely 16 and drive 90-100 on the hwy! as far as the Mini being a safe car....

Back when I had my 02 MC I was doing about 55 down a 2 lane road a woman in a mid/late 80's cadilac pulls out in front of me I hit the brakes and slamed in to her!! the cadilac bent in half her airbags went off and the car was TOTALED! my mini on the other hand had a broken bumper support and hood/bumper dammage I was able to drive it home!!!! I hit her doing about 35-40 and my airbags did NOT go off ??? not that I needed them! car was in the shop for about 4 weeks getting fixed as all the parts had to be shipped over but when I got it back it was as good as new the subframe and body were not dammaged at all! just the hood and bumper support

 

If they were, I'd probably see them on my quad.

 

i am surprised that no one has mentioned these.

 

Nice....*****, I'd paste some hair on those.

 

a irend found a set of those while walking to my house omGOSH so many laughs ...like a year ago

 

funny thread

in the past 6 years out of all the 100's of vehicle accidents that we have responded to up here in the Santa Cruz mts I can remember only two involving trucks, and those were head ons with fools on sportbikes that crossed the double yellow. Split 50/50 the majority of the rest were sports cars and sport bikes being driven way too fast, then add in a few SUV's and family type cars

 

Another thing: I HATE it when those guys with ten million lights on their trucks are following me at night. They jacked the suspension up so high that the LOW beams are still blinding me when they're behind me! That should be illegal. After all, they're making it harder for me to see the road in front of me!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvis_Saracen

I always wanted one of these, even way back
before SUV monster truck things were "cool".

I used to see them for sale in military type magazines.

I'm not sure if you can get them now.

 

LMAO! There's a gun range in Garland, TX where the owner advertises his business on two vehicles almost exactly like the one you showed. He picked them up at a scrapyard in Britain when on a business trip. They're just bodies on wheels (no engine, seats, etc. inside). He welded the hatches shut so kids can't climb inside. They look awesome.

 

It's always the people who "feel safer" driving the 4x4 that I would see upside down in the snowy ditch on the snowy mountain roads. Unfortunately it is the false sense of security that drives people to make bad decisions on the road… and then there is the “invincible syndrome” that some get. I see the idiots whether I’m driving the Mini, or driving the Chev 2500HD.

BTW – throw out all of the crash-tests, safety ratings, etc… the minute a vehicle becomes taller than when it came from the factory.

 

One: While moving on the road, a larger vehicle is ALWAYS more dangerous than a smaller vehicle. You have less maneuverability(takes longer to change directions, increased chance of roll over, etc.) and increased braking distance. As far as basic movement goes(this excludes towing, hauling, utility issues), the only advantage a truck has, is increased traction on bad terrain from a dead stop.

Two: In an accident, all bets are off. Too many variables for a single equation.

 

pics from the job. mostly german driving machines reduced to rubble

 

Okay, well this has been a great little argument about car vs. truck safety. But the OP was talking about lifted trucks not you normal F150 or Doge Ram.

And the fact is that lifting a truck changes how it will react in an accident and basically makes it so all the planning and designing done by the manufacture to make it crash and react in a specific way is void. That is why laws are in place that restrict how high you can lift and in most states lower your car or truck. It is usually expressed in the bottom of the bumper can only be X number of inches high and/or the headlights can only be X number of inches high. Some state will not allow you to exceed 2 or 3 inches above OEM though. You can argue weather the laws should be in place or not but they are doing it for a reason: Virginia did look at modified-vehicle crashes and determined that fatality rates, on average, were 29 times as high for crashes involving modified pickups as for those involving unaltered trucks. "These kinds of crashes involving modified trucks don't happen often," says David McAllister, a highway engineer for the state's crash investigation team, "but when they do, it's devastating." (US News and World Report Article from 2004)

 

I find my license plate to be relevant to this thread.

 

Yes Z Meters?

What relevance does THAT have?

 

And with no specifics posted on what caused those accidents the pictures are meaningless. i could find just as many pictures of pickups wrecked.

 

I got a huge charge out of those plastic ********... especially since the first pair of plastic ***** I saw hanging on a big truck matched the truck's color - blue! Heck, if I wanted to advertise what a d!** I was, I wouldn't ALSO advertise that I was, shall we say, partner-acquisition-challenged...

Have to agree, though: The safety of ANY vehicle is in the driver. Consider the old VW microbus - where the Driver sat in FRONT of the front axle! Those things had EXCELLENT on-road safety records, mainly because there was nothing between the driver and the accident, so they were driven VERY cautiously.

 

i am often tempted to snip off the sac and replace it with a douchebag when i see one parked.

 

Trucks do not make one an idiot, but idiots do seem to be "empowered" when behind the wheel of trucks... and some seem to feel a need to advertise there newly found super-idiot powers by jacking them up.

As far as overcompensating for something - one of my old girlfreinds used to say "the higher the truck, the smaller the..." I have no experience in validating her observations, but my truck has always been stock height.

 

they were all driving sports sedans on a curvy 2 lane mt hwy rated for 55 and they all crashed from excessive speed and overconfidence that they and machine could play fast and the furious

out of all the wrecks on the highways we cover over the past 6 years I can recall ony 1 lifted truck 3-4 more truck and or SUV crashes but hundreds of Sports sedan/car and 100's more motorcyle crashes

The lifted trucks stand out when you see them on the highways but the stats around here show that it is rare for us to repond to one of them in a wreck

just my experiences in the little part of the world of Fire and Rescue that I serve, your results may vary.

 

Hwy-17 can be a real b*tch to the novices.

 

Anyone seen this pic floating around? I think the Mini did pretty well in this match up. I think the Mini pretty much scooped it up and flipped it over. BTW, the SUV driver ran a red light ... on the phone .

 

Yah , seen that pic many time happy you got out ok ..... How fast were you going? and did one of them get totaled?