The Last Straw/Frank McNally: I've always thought that people who drive large off-road vehicles in urban areas are, at best, inconsiderate of other road-users and, at worst, petrol-guzzling environmental criminals who deserve to be shot.
So when I rented a car over the Internet recently and, on arrival in America, discovered that the hire company had either upgraded me or interpreted my use of the term "mid-size vehicle" to mean "nothing smaller than a minibus", I had a dilemma.
Fortunately, I knew exactly what to say, which was: "Take this big, new, so-called Sports Utility Vehicle away from me, please, and give me something less wasteful of the earth's precious resources."
And that's what I'll say the next time it happens - I promise. This time I was jet-lagged, and wanted to get to the hotel quickly, so I said nothing. Also, I didn't want to disappoint my children, who were wide-eyed with excitement at the sight of the machine that clever Daddy had picked.
Clever Daddy was under enough pressure as it was, having just realised that he had never seen the inside of an automatic-transmission vehicle before, and had no idea how to drive one. The universal male guiding principle with new appliances - plug it in and see what happens, using the instruction manual as a face guard in case of an explosion - was clearly no of use here. Furthermore, the rental company's diagram of the existing scratches on the vehicle was still burning a hole in my pocket. This was not the place for experiments.
So, explaining to the children that there was a slight technical problem with the car, I returned to the office and asked if they had anything with a clutch and a gear-stick. After a short pause for laughter at my quaint European ways, the assistant informed me that, no, gearshifts had left America with the British. Instead, accompanying me back to the vehicle, he delivered a 30-second course in automatic driving, answered my probing questions ("so if I understand correctly, my left leg does nothing?"), and watched as I manoeuvred gingerly out of the car-park. From there, my confidence growing, I pulled into the left lane - Yikes, wrong lane! - and headed downtown.
The great thing about automatic transmission is that the only real choices you have are "forwards" and "backwards". And I quickly mastered all of these directions, except one. Luckily, the US is a go-ahead place where opportunities for reversing are minimal, because no matter how much I adjusted the rear-view mirrors, the SUV seemed to have a blind spot the size of three pedestrians. It's just as well there aren't many pedestrians in the US either.
Most of the reversing I had to do was in the driveway of our friends' house in Seattle. Roger and Zelma have a long, narrow driveway with a curve in the middle and a lot of dense shrubbery of the sort designed to scratch rental vehicles.
They also have an elderly cat called "Elvis". And I'm not saying Elvis is fat and immobile, exactly, but his turning circle was slightly wider than the SUV's. Every time I reversed across a bump in the driveway, I was convinced it had fur. Most of the time, I couldn't stay on the driveway anyway. During our stay in Seattle, our hosts pruned their shrubbery drastically. They said it needed to be done, regardless, but I know they were just being nice.
Thankfully, Elvis was still alive when we left. And once I was safely out on the freeways, there was no looking back (except occasionally to check whether we still had the kids). In fact, we quickly realised that the rental company did us a big favour with the SUV, because I doubt we could have dealt with the social stigma of driving anything more modest on the Interstate roads.
Most of the vehicles that were smaller than ours were being towed by larger vehicles. Apparently, everyone over 50 in the US lives in an RV (Recreational Vehicle), which is a retirement home with wheels, and the SUV behind it is used only as a run-around. Another common sight is the Humvee, which is a military-type vehicle that many Americans now use for rough-terrain expeditions, such as trips to the local Wal-Mart.
If we'd been driving a saloon-type car, it would probably have attracted the suspicion of the police, who would have pulled us over regularly and asked what exactly we were doing in America. As it was, so long as I stayed on the right side of the road, which was most of the time, we were able to blend in with the locals. By the end of the first week, even my left leg was starting to relax and enjoy the trip.