Re: [Leica] Cars large and small

[Alexey Merz <alexey@webcom.com>]

First off: 

Mark, I am really happy that Karen is not injured. Still,
any accident is traumatic; send her my best wishes. 

As for a new vehicle: I am *extremely* unconviced that
SUVs offer a meaningful safety advantage in normal 
driving. While it is true that larger vehicles (in
principle) transmit less collision force to an occupant,
SUVs roll over about twice as often as passenger cars 
(DOT statistics) and are *not* significantly safer for
the occupants.

Worse: they are potentially less able to AVOID accidents
because they cannot turn as well at speed, and generally
cannot stop nearly as fast as average passenger cars 
(let alone high performance ones). And they are (again, 
DOT stats) more likely to kill the occupants of other 
cars. Not a good thing! Note that your wife was uninjured 
and was driving an old Volvo wagon. They've only gotten 
safer :-).

On topic: I am about to move to northern New England,
and I will thus be driving my 2000 Subaru wagon (4,000
miles already; I love this car!) across the country, 
March 9-20, with my kid sister. 

First time I've done a trip all the way across, and I'm 
really excited. We'll be driving from San Francisco 
to the eastern seaboard, taking a genrally southerly
route to avoid bad weather and to visit friends in
New Mexico on the way. I'll have cameras & Kodachrome 
with me, and maybe a few rolls of Velvia for subjects 
that seem to warrant it.

Where should we go? What should we see? Any ideas?

Alexey Merz