by Cecile Perez

Much of the time, I see your average five passenger car on the road with only one person in it. Rarely, if ever, do I see a full car, SUV, or minivan. I notice that even though there’s a carpool lane on the highway, hardly anyone is in it, even when it would benefit the movement of traffic greatly in order to siphon some of it into that lane, making busy city commutes less lengthy. Either we are living terribly individualized lives that don’t allow sharing of cars, or we, as Americans, don’t think of carpooling as a necessary or regular part of our routine in order to save ourselves money and not tax the environment while we’re at it. I’m thinking it could very well be a combination of both. Very often, I find myself watching people in a huge 7 passenger SUV carry only one person (the driver), and maybe three or four, maximum.

This is a little unnerving to me. I see moms in these SUVs very often, taking stops at different places during the day, likely before they go and pick up their children from school. Even then, when they do have their family in the car, I hardly ever see more than a few children get out. It’s not just mom’s that are guilty of this, either – I wouldn’t want to lay all the blame on them. It’s also people who consider the large SUV somehow stylish. I see people drive these around with maybe one passenger sometimes just because it is stylish or fun to drive or take a ride in a giant car. It makes me wonder why people feel it is acceptable to live in such excess, and how much they think about saving their own resources and money, even if they’re not thinking about the environment. Huge SUVs like this might seem to be the perfect family car or the perfect stylish type of car to some, but not to me.