to get fed up with receiving more than the average amount of abuse on the road just because I drive a range rover?

[Mrs4x4]

I get the whole environment thing psses some people off but this seems out of proportion with the abuse. I am a considerate driver and really object to the abuse especially when my DC's are in the car and people are swearing. Recently parked car in a supermarket carpark to have someone who lived in a nearby flat on one of the higher floor start shouting that i should get back in my RR and pss off.

basically, its just jealousy because they think you have got more money than them, and your choice of car (to them) is a display of that, just like you might wear a rolex watch, for example.

Personally I doubt that it is the environmental impact that bothers them. It is the fact that they take 2 or more parking spaces, can't pass on minor roads leaving one or other of you to reverse for ages (and somehow it isn't often the 4x4 who ends up reversing), and are simply not designed for towns or cities. But we love them because they keep our nearest and dearest safe (just lets not think of what they do to anyone else). Whenever there is a prang outside school, a 4x4 is always involved, and guess which car is never damaged? I haven't checked recently but I'd hazard a guess that there is little difference between 3P and comprehensive insurance premiums as the 4x4s so often emerge unscathed.

But anyway, how do you know that the people in the OP weren't objecting to you on some other grounds? Thay might have said that you should have got back into your Ford Mondeo and cleared off? Perhaps it was your haircut that they objected to?

Mrs4x4, have you actually looked at your RR from the pedestrian's point of view? That flipping bonnet is bloody scary. If you are run over by a 'normal' car, you'll be scooped up and thrown onto the bonnet - not fun but often survivable. RRs are so huge and the bonnet is so designed that, instead of taking out your legs, they will hit you in the abdomen (or even chest, depending on your height). That means you are dead.

So personally I fear RRs, especially as the height makes the driver feel safer and therefore more likely to take risks/ignore danger to other road users. I wouldn't abuse you in public, but I can see why people might. The car is, by its very nature, incredibly aggressive.

tbh even if I wasn't having number 3 we would need a bigger car the Clio just doesn't have the room in the back, poor DD1's legs can't stretch out properly if DP is in the passenget seat.

Suppose it's like anything you just get used to it in time.

yes bubblepop you are absolutely right

No Bubblepop.

It isn't that.

Oh, and if, God forbid, a RR hits a child, the kid gets it in the head. Clearly even more dangerous.

are there lots of tricky grass verges where you live then?

I don't verbally abuse people for the type of car they drive, but I've found, in general that people who drive Range Rovers are like folks who drive BMWs: they drive like utter twats.

Personally, I think 4x4s should be banned in all cities except when in use for business or as mobility cars.

I am very, very, very into cars, and I simply do not have the desire to have a 4x4 Bubblepop, not ever.

How insightful bubblepop yes all us "poor" inferior vehicle drivers are green with envy

Well no I don't own a country estate but drive a RR for the following reasons:
1.They are nice
2.They feel safe
3.It is much easier to get DC's in and out of the car given the height
4.I can get everything in the back without it being like a Krypton Factor puzzle
5.They are nice

I would add I don't have blacked out windows, am adept at parking (which cannot be said for many drivers of other vehicles), i don't take the car when I can reasonably walk (weather permitting)and don't bully people on the road (unless they are really cr*p drivers)

funnily enough, me neither quadro. even though i could do with one as i live down a muddy country lane and have a large brood to fill it!

'Personally I doubt that it is the environmental impact that bothers them. It is the fact that they take 2 or more parking spaces, can't pass on minor roads leaving one or other of you to reverse for ages (and somehow it isn't often the 4x4 who ends up reversing), and are simply not designed for towns or cities.'

Someone tried to pull that on me once. I didn't reverse. I lit up a cigarette, made a call on my mobile and sat there like I had all day.

And now, bubbletop, people aren't jealous, they're pissed off because people in RRs generally drive like twats.

Other cars feel safe, have the height and the boot space without being the size of a tank.
Bubblepop, I'd have to want a RR myself to be jealous of people who have them.

There is just no hope for morons who drive 4X4 cars in cities. I curse them too, but usually only when I have yet another small child to autopsy on my mortuary slab who's strayed into the path of one. They kill small children out of all proportion to the number that there actually are on the roads, and as a mother of two small children that really, really pisses me off. I couldn't give a rat's arse about the environmental side of it; let's hear the justification for driving something so wildly inappropriate in narrow, densely-populated streets when you know how much more often they will kill children in a collision

lol expat, the headline in our local paper was about a stand off between a bus driver and a car with a lady driver, neither would reverse, 40 minutes later the police had to be called and not one of the bus passengers complained, made me chuckle it did.

"people in RRs generally drive like twats"

IME people generally drive like twats regardless of what car (or bike) they drive/ride.

I think RR's are a bloody menace.But there's no excuse for verbal abuse. Don't understand the posts which say people might be jealous. Why? That you drive round an oversized vehicle polluting the environment and causing a risk to everyone else's kids. I don't think so.

My little Clio always looks well out of place in the P&C spaces, it's tucked away behind all the RRs, Zafiras and other people carriers.

(PS expat - why are you in hiding from the Due in July thread?)

i could'nt afford one if i wanted but if i could..and i got one..i would drive like a tw#t and not give a boll##ks what anyone thought of me! so mrs 4x4, i think you should worry no more

lol pooka and soupy !! i am off on dragons den with that one!

i live in the sticks. back behind us people live off a dirt road that's wet and muddy most of the year.

yet i've seen very few 4x4s over here.

because the times when you actually need them is very small.

i owned one in the US - for 4x4ing to remote climbing and camping locations.

not poncing around the city thinking everyone was jealous.

Shergar

Well perhaps others hate them because

1. they are ugly and scream 'step away from the car' (as one motoring critic - presumably a dedicated petrol head) said of them
2. They are very unsafe (for pedestrians)
3. It is totally unnecessary to have an engine designed (and with fuel consumption) for the desert simply to save you leaning down to get children in and out
4. Ditto re getting things in and out - why would you need a great big engine in order to get stuff in- unless your stuff is bags of cement etc
5. They are still ugly

AND

7 they block narrow streets.

Is any of this helping you understand why people abuse you?