In reply to:


The speed of traffic in Atlanta is quite often that fast. Not only that, but most SUVs have a top speed of 100+ mph. It isn't like they CAN'T drive that fast.

My Ford Explorer starts to feel a little uncomfortable at around 75 mph, mainly because the wind wants to jerk it around the road.



Hey, I thought you guys had a 55 MPH speed limit - whats this 75+MPH or even 100 MPH stuff?

Yeah, I know some states have unlimited speeds, but I thought it was back country states like Utah that had unlimited speeds, not GA.

Doesn't sound like off-roading kind of activities SUVs are supposed to be used for, unless it on the Salt Flats in Utah for a land speed record attempt.

Yeah, I know, gotta be able to get to the offroad place real quick so we have more time to do the off-roading bit our SUV is designed for right?

In any case, as commonsense will tell you, the faster you go in any vehicle, the more drag you have, so much so that at speeds above 70+ MPH, you spend most (90% or so) of the energy in the fuel just overcoming wind resistance - and the drag goes up exponentially so as you go faster the drag goes up by a higher factor.

And driving any SUV over the "speed limit" they were "tested" to travel at makes a mockery of the minimalist MPG figures (21MPG) that they have to meet in the first place.

At those speeds for long periods of time the MPG figures must be in the low teens or even single digit.

In reply to:


Not only that, but most SUVs have a top speed of 100+ mph. It isn't like they CAN'T drive that fast.

My Ford Explorer starts to feel a little uncomfortable at around 75 mph, mainly because the wind wants to jerk it around the road.



Doesn't sound to me like SUVs are actually designed to travel at those speeds regardless of what the salesman told you, or the speedo says.

Or the wind buffeting would not be a problem, either that or the vehicle control mechanisms are not really as good as the engine is - and that wouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

A F1 race car or even a top end sports car can go over 200MPH+ consistently and not be "buffeted by wind" - because its designed that way.

In any case, no matter how good a vehicle you think you have, if you hit anything in a vehicle at 60+ MPH, even with airbags and normal seat belts your survivability chances go down dramatically.

And imagine two SUVs hitting head-on at 75+ MPH each - doesn't bear thinking about really. No airbags or seatbelts or truck chassis will save you from that.

They don't test vehicle crash resistance at those sorts of speeds, its much lower - and probably lower than 55MPH even, so who knows what your SUV will do when crashed at those speeds.


To show you what happens at high speeds when wind gets under a vehicle heres a true story...


[and no, *NO* JATO rockets were involved - honest :-) - and its documented - and it really happened]

There was a case over here about 8 years ago where some local top notch racing driver used his racing Porsche to try and set an official landspeed record on a normal road -

- no ones tried since for good reason:

They closed the road and did all the proper & legal things, the ambulance and fire crews were standing by in case anything happened, they even had a helicopter ready to take the injured to hospital as this was out in the country away from the nearest hospitals, in case of a major incident...

...The first pass went well - over 300+kph on the first pass, a bit bumpy in a couple of places but they set the speed record.

But they needed a second pass to make it official:

While they got the car ready for its second run, the wind got up a little bit - not much, just a bit more than on the first run, and this time it was into (or more across the wind) than the previous run - but time was a ticking down and the wind was still there so they had to go again to make it official...

On the second pass to get the record the car was doing over 300+kph again when the wind got under it as it went over a the crest of a small dip in the road and turned it slightly side on to the road - the resulting accident caused the car to rollover about 6 times along/on top of a strong wire fence beside the road - it made a real mess of about 100+ yards of the fence - with solid wooden uprights and massive wooden fenceposts, it demolished the fence completely, and most of the car.

What was left of the car (which was more the central passenger compartment - or whats left of it - came to rest about 150 metres from road in the middle of a field.

- the driver survived - just and after about 9 months or rehab was able to sort of walk again, his left arm was pretty badly damaged (it was a left hand drive Porsche) and his arm got rolled over and crished more than once during the accident - and he was wearing full racing seatbelts with proper roll bars inside the vehicle to protect himself in the event of a rollover/crash.

There is some TV footage of this around - I've seen it a couple of times and wondered how the guy survived - I'm sure he does too.

And this was in a car designed to crash at high speeds and survive - it had all the right crumple zones and proper rollcage and stuff - and yet the guy got very, very badly injured.