Sedans are good too, but I'm talking about cars with similar space. Sedans are seen as too small to be a family vehicle. I would love if everyone here could drive sedans, but the reason people bought the SUV's in the first place is the size and utility so I can't see people going from an Expedition down to a Civic or Accord. Hatchbacks and wagons do offer the utility that people want, since it has plenty of place for all their stuff.
As for the safety, I agree with you 100%, the people who are scared of 2wd are the ones who think you should be able to drive the same way whether it's dry or snowing. They are the same people who cause most of the accidents on the roads. I hate to say it, but they've basically been dumbed down, they have 4wd, traction control, stability control, and then think you can just drive like normal when it's snowing.
I don't doubt that it will reduce our mobility and freedom to go anywhere we want to whenever we want to, but I don't think it's entirely a bad thing. We're still a very wealthy nation, when people want to go somewhere, they can and they will. My hope is that they will cut out a lot of the pointless driving though. When 4 people all leave the same street and drive to the same place for work, there is obviously some unnecessary driving there. I know there are some people who really don't have a choice, they live far away from work and there is no mass transit or car pool they can take there. These are the people that are going to be hurt. However, for every one person like that, there are 10 more burning oil unnecessarily. If we all just cut out the unnecessary trips we would still be free to go wherever, just at a slightly higher cost.
Politicians got us into this mess, nobody believes them anymore that they're going to come into office and do something that will get gas prices back to the way they were. People are realizing that they need to change something themselves. Our president and politicians pride themselves on the fact that the government is not the solution to everyones problems and for once I have to agree with them. They've been saying we should keep buying stuff, keep using resources, buy a big house in the middle of nowhere, a couple cars and be free to do whatever we want, but when things start going downhill they offer absolutely no solutions. All they offer are stupid ideas like ethanol or more tax cuts. Economic pressures are sadly the only thing that is going to get us out of this mess we're in.
