BMJ  2006;333:206 (22 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7560.206

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Four wheel drive vehicles, class war, and the BMJ

To many people, the gas guzzling, road hogging, bullbar-brandishing four wheel drive or sports utility vehicle has long seemed fair game. What are they doing, clogging up the streets of our inner cities? Have their drivers somehow missed the turning to rural Ambridge?

In the United Kingdom, the Independent newspaper has called them "Enemy of the people." Andrew Simms, policy director of UK think tank the New Economics Foundation, has dubbed them "Satan's little run-around." Less derogatory nicknames include include "Chelsea tractors" and—in Newcastle upon Tyne—"Jesmond tractors," because of their popularity in chic, urban areas—particularly, as the stereotypers would have it, among the so called yummy mummies or young stylish mothers. London mayor Ken Livingstone has called those who take their children to school in four wheel drive vehicles "complete idiots" and last week proposed increasing the London congestion charge to £25 for "environmentally damaging" vehicles, which would include the larger four wheel drives.

It seems that almost no one, apart from their owners and manufacturers, has a nice word to say about these behemoths. How marvellous, then, must the BMJ's recent study have seemed, confirming as it did all the prejudices that critics hold about Chelsea tractors (BMJ 2006:333: 71-3[Abstract/Free Full Text] and published as an online first 23 June 2006). Talking on a hand held mobile phone at the wheel, not wearing a seat belt—what more can you expect from the selfish rich?

"Politics of envy fuel 4x4 hatred," read the headline over an article in the Independent's motoring supplement by Christopher Macgowan, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, written in response to the BMJ's article. It seems that in publishing its recent paper (and a previous editorial that claimed that four wheel drive vehicles proposed a particular risk to pedestrians and should carry a health warning (BMJ 2005;331: 787-8[Free Full Text])), the BMJ has stepped right into a class war about these vehicles that has long been raging in the media and on the internet. But the battle lines are not clearly drawn. For while some see any criticisms of four wheel drive vehicles as a justified attack on the rich and characterise their owners as toffs who can't bear to leave their Land Rovers at the country manor, others see them as an attack on the prosperous working class.

One website that cites the BMJ research is that of the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s (www.stopurban4x4s.org.uk/index.htm), which organises regular eye catching events to draw attention to its campaign "to make driving a big 4x4 as socially unacceptable as drink-driving and to increase taxes on big 4x4 vehicles." Earlier this year, the alliance—which describes its supporters as including "many different individuals who are concerned about the rise of urban 4x4s, as well as environment, safety and sustainable transport groups"—staged a "Footballers' wives protest" at the training ground of Chelsea Football Club. The alliance website says, "As players arrived...an Alliance referee handed the footballers a giant `red card' for their poor choice of gas-guzzling 4x4s. He was joined by a gaggle of `footballers' wives' in their most fabulous fake fur and bling, and with their very straightest hairdos. The wives berated the players with stylish pink placards saying, `I'd rather guzzle champagne than petrol.'"

Why are 4x4s such a popular target for mudslinging? Credit: MANCHESTER FRIENDS OF THE EARTH

 

While the footballers' wives stunt may appear to have betrayed an element of snobbery, another of the alliance's activities, a "free `mudwash,'" played on four wheel drive vehicles' reputation as the preferred option of the well heeled country set. "Alliance members across the country turned out to offer urban 4x4 drivers instant credibility with an artfully applied coating of real mud," explains the website. "Activists and concerned members of the public had fun taking part in this light-hearted summer event, offering a range of looks, including `Gloucestershire Gunk' and `Surrey Slurry'."

A less colourful presence on the internet is 4x4 Prejudice (www.4x4prejudice.com/), a site "designed to provide a reasoned and informed response to some of the criticisms and arguments made against the vehicle genre." It claims, "A lot of 4x4 owners are not rich show offs...we would say that most are not in fact. Many 4x4 owners have only one vehicle, and choose the 4x4 as the most adaptable and practical.

"4x4 owners are not faceless, evil people, intent on destroying the world and maiming their fellow road users. They are normal people who have exercised their right to choose." In which case, why does it seem that so many people are out to get them?

Independent motoring correspondent Sean O'Grady has made the more commonly heard argument that "the case against the 4x4 seems to be based on a sort of lentil socialism. To the protesters, these cars tend to be driven by rich parents taking their spoiled offspring to private school where they can gain an unfair advantage in life over the children of the proletariat."

Danny Bermant, a London based blogger, offers a similar class perspective on anti-4x4 fever. "Like fox hunting, this has very little to do with the planet and everything to do with class war," he says. "Protestors hate SUVs because of what they represent, a status symbol. They are not only a symbol of conspicuous wealth, but their owners sit well above the rest of us and we feel small" (www.bermant.com/blog/2005/01/more-class-war-than-4x4.html).

Brendan O'Neill, deputy editor of spiked ("an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism"), offers a different kind of answer. "Strip away all the talk about pollution and safety and the anti-4x4 campaign is, in essence, a middle-class attack on what are seen as the vulgar habits and tastes of the aspirant working classes. Many of those who drive 4x4s—from the school-run mums with big hair and bling jewellery to those footballers who grew up in grey suburbs and now find themselves earning £20 000 a week—are new money, people who have a lot of disposable income and who want to flaunt it" (www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAFDB.htm).

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BMJ tjackson{at}bmj.com

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