Living in a rural suburban bedroom community in the Northeast United States it is very common for me to see that the number of cars are far outweighed buy the number of trucks and SUVs on the street.

Every day for the past few years I try to count the number of vehicles passing by as I sit on my porch and look out on one of our main roads. The area I live in is primarily a bedroom community where local jobs either pay less or can not be found, people need to drive at least 30 miles one way to get to the nearest city and most people drive up to 80 miles one way to get to their jobs in a large city. The amount of gas that the people use can be anywhere from three to four gallons a day for a single person driving in a small truck to a full tank every day for large trucks and SUCs umm I mean SUVs.

This really has me wondering… even if someone can afford the price $3.25 or more a gallon for gas and are willing to pay $200 a week just to get to work is it reasonable that they use so much gas and cause hardship for everyone else.

I don’t think it is and on top of it the emission standards for these large vehicles are less then for normal small to midsized cars.

The fact is most of these people don’t need these larger vehicles. They work office jobs not construction. They drive to work alone they don’t carpool and they don’t need to travel in harsh weather because they are a doctor or police officer.

If most of these people are like my next door neighbors they almost never use their vehicle for anything related to its size or function. They don’t tow a boat every weekend to the beach. They don’t fill it up with kids and go camping. They don’t haul lumber, go on ski trips in the mountians or fill their trucks with plants every weekend (or ever) to improve their yards.

The fact is 90% of the miles they put on their Trucks and SUCs  are commuting alone with maybe a breifcase or folder on their passenger seat.

Now I am not saying that their vehicles should be taken away but if you are wondering why we have a problem maybe it is as simple as looking in your own driveway or neighbors and realizing that for every gallon of gas a regular car uses… their SUC or Truck is sucking down 2 or maybe even more.

What I don’t get is if you are going to drive a Gas Hog then why not go all the way and drive a 1969 Chevelle SS 396 that gets 12MPG just like the SUV but its much more fun to drive.

Oh and take those [I support the Troupes] Stickers off your SUCs because half of all the money you spend on gas goes to oil producing countries that don’t like us.

Yea we all know what the problem is .. but why don’t we do anything about it…