The first part of the article basically says that Americans love SUV’s because they make the driver feel safe, powerful, in control, under any driving conditions. They love them so much in fact that one Ford SUV plant in Michigan grossed 11 billion dollars last year (almost as much as McDonalds nationwide). And the automakers love them because SUVs are not subject to the same regulations as cars and minivans, and as a result are much cheaper and easier to build. Gladwell then shows, by means of a visit with Consumer Reports and a review of accident statistics, that the feelings of invincibility and control in an SUV are sheer myth. Bottom line is that the benefits of an SUV’s size and weight in an accident are more than offset, much more than offset, by the higher risk of getting into an accident in the first place due to less precise and responsive handling, longer braking speed (AWD notwithstanding), and fewer signals to the driver of poor road conditions. And that’s despite the marginal advantage of visibility due to the height of SUVs, itself offset by a higher risk of rollover.

Ultimately the problem is all in the driver’s mind. If drivers realized that they are no safer (in fact somewhat less safe) in an SUV than in a subcompact, their concentration and driving behaviour would compensate, SUV accidents would fall, and millions of ruined lives would be spared the consequences of this unwitting recklessness. Unfortunately, as long as SUVs convey the illusion of control and safety, that’s not likely to happen. And the answer isn’t to make SUVs and trucks subject to the same regulations as cars (though such regulations would vastly improve SUV product quality and gas mileage, which would be a good thing). That would increase the price but wouldn’t change the pyschology. It’s like when young hockey players were required to wear helmets, face guards and neck braces: Injury rates actually rose, because players suddenly felt safer taking more risks, and became careless, even aggressive, with elbows and sticks, feeling like they and their adversaries were immune to harm with all the padding.

Gladwell ascribes the insatiable passion for control and safety and invincibility to a syndrome called Learned Helplessness. The syndrome reinforces the exaggerated feeling of lack of control, of enormous danger, of inability to respond to danger, by repeated exposure to actual or apparent threats:

Two years ago, millions of cows were slaughtered to contain a ‘mad cow’ breakout in Britain, and recent events in North America have whipped up the hysteria again, on the offchance that a small number of people could catch a rare form of CJD from infected cows. This week in China tens of thousands of wild civets are being slaughtered because someone thinks they might be connected with one new SARS case there. And as Gladwell reports, three years ago the greatest auto industry scandal in decades brought Firestone to its knees due to 271 tire failures in 630 billion tire miles, possibly contributing to a mere 0.00005% of auto accidents in the US that year.

Gladwell leaves it at that, but the reader’s mind cannot. The reality is that this delusion of danger, and the illusion that something can or has to be done, that someone — British cows, Canadian farmers, Chinese cats, Firestone, Saddam Hussein — must be brought to account in order to give us back control, is literally making us all crazy. It causes us to believe we cannot let children out of our sight even for a moment. It causes us to wildly change our diets, to avoid visiting whole countries, to fingerprint whole nations of visitors, to suspend civil liberties, to put barbed wire around our communities, to drink only bottled water, to wear masks, to introduce five levels of increasingly hysterical ‘threat’ to everyone’s safety.

It is irrational, neurotic, panic-stricken behaviour, a wild over-reaction to a tiny uncontrollable risk while we recklessly disregard risks we could control and which kill and destroy lives in large numbers everyday — air and water pollution, tainted food from corrupt and underregulated meat packers, drugs in sport and airplane cockpits, drunk drivers, kids with guns, corporate frauds, a prison system that incarcerates the mentally ill and encourages criminal recidivism — and on and on and on. Unfortunately, it is also in the best interest of the media and governments to focus on the uncontrollable risks, and to pander to public fear and fascination with them. They’re more sensational, more visceral. And since there’s really nothing that can be done about them, you can do anything, or nothing, in response to them, and not be held accountable, or responsible. The risks we could control, on the other hand, are mundane, day-to-day, hard and expensive but not impossible to remedy, would if remedied save thousands of lives, and is the responsibility of all of us. Viewers, voters, and consumers don’t like to think about such things. Messy. Complicated. Nagging. Costly. And the media, and politicians, are glad to oblige.

P.S.: The reason you never see photos of the esteemed Mr. Gladwell, he of the Tipping Point, is that he is only 39, and looks younger. His credibility demands we think of him as older. Besides which, he’s (shhh — don’t tell anyone) a Canadian. Also, this week’s New Yorker also has a great article that is, at least for now, online: James Surowiecki’s summary of war profiteering in Iraq and the insanity and cost of outsourcing ‘non-core’ competency military activities to Bush’s buddies (oops, I mean, to the private sector).