My nightmare encounters with SUVs... slap a big tax on them

Nearly everybody seems to own one. And, it seems, everybody else believes they should have one.

Two weeks ago, shortly after my car – and me – were very nearly crushed by one, a friend sat with me and explained it, as I shook and trembled with sheer shock.

It’s a status thing, she said. Something that makes people think they’ve made it.

Other people just like the idea of driving an SUV.

But does everybody actually need these behemoths?

Over the years, these colossal vehicles have become the most popular kind of car on our roads. And every year, I read recently, they’re made on average two centimetres bigger.

The government is currently considering the imposition of a heavy tax on SUVs ahead of Budget 2026. And not before time. SUVs are a menace.

Worse, when combined with the needless speed and the increasingly aggressive behaviour of some drivers, they have the potential to be killers.

Here’s what happened to me:

I was driving a Toyota Auris, which, as you probably know, is a relatively small, compact car, along an extremely narrow, winding back road, deep in the heart of the countryside, at about 2pm one Sunday.

I was due to meet my husband and a friend in a local restaurant, after which the three of us were to attend a music performance in a village pub. As it happened, that day, we were all travelling to the lunch in separate cars, so I was alone.

I know this particular road very well and I was driving quite cautiously.

Perhaps that’s what saved my life.

Long story short, around a sharp corner came a huge, gleaming, black sports utility vehicle. It was so large and so wide it took up, in my terrified estimation, some 80% of the width of this little ribbon of a road. And it was belting it. Absolutely belting it.

I barely had time to jerk my car out of its way and into the ditch. My small tin-can of a Toyota Auris. Sorry, Toyota, but that’s what the Auris was in comparison to that thing with the mammoth grill beneath a bank of metallic black which came barrelling straight at me.

And then it was gone.

The driver didn’t even pause.

I sat there, shivering, one car wheel slightly down in a thankfully shallow ditch at the side of the road. I remained there for what seemed like an eternity, too frightened to move a muscle, let alone start the car again.

The village was no more than 10 minutes’ drive from the spot of the near-collision, but after I eventually pulled myself together and started the engine, it took me 40 minutes to get there.

Because I was driving like Mr Magoo.

Later, my husband described me as a jittery, trembling wreck.

I was shaky and tearful and had a pain in my neck for days from stress because every time I thought about what had happened, the neck pain came back. My nights were peppered with broken sleep and nightmares.

I don’t know where the driver of that SUV was rushing to. I do know there is no doctor’s surgery there. There is no hospital emergency department, no labour ward, no police station.

Just a scenic tourist destination.

A week or so later, I was driving at the top of the Pouladuff Road towards Noonan’s Road, at the very top of Barrack Street.

Again, a Sunday afternoon. What is it with Sunday afternoons, these days?

The road was extremely busy. Cars were parked on both sides and there was a constant stream of traffic travelling in both directions. Some took their time, and pulled in for one another.

Except the youngish guy, maybe early thirties, driving the bulky SUV with a woman in the passenger seat and a child in the back.

The man drove fast, given the intensity of the traffic and the presence of parked cars on both sides of the road.

As I spotted him approaching, weaving in and out and waiting for nobody, my heart sank.

Despite the fact that I pulled in and gave way, it didn’t happen fast enough.

He threw up his hands, palms up, in that universal gesture of contemptuous impatience, and swore at me through his window.

The child in the back stared out at me, mouth open, eyes wide.

Shame on you, man, whoever you are.

A few weeks ago, in this newspaper, a public health doctor, Dr Catherine Conlon, questioned the need for these huge, lumbering vehicles on city streets. I would wholeheartedly agree.

To her argument, I would add the point that SUVs are not needed on 95% of rural back roads either.

Not only are they quite unnecessary. They’re a menace.

I agree entirely with Dr Conlon’s argument that a move away from SUVs would bring a reduction in traffic deaths of pedestrians and cyclists, roomier streets, and improved wellbeing for city citizens – especially children.

I would add that a reduction in the number of these cumbersome SUVs on country roads would also vastly improve the wellbeing of residents of rural villages and towns.

Implement a tax on them.

Make it heavy enough to bring an end to Ireland’s tempestuous love affair with these massive and - in the wrong hands - very dangerous vehicles.

Like I said, they’re a goddamned menace.