I, personally, have an SUV. There were two main reasons I got it. It is large enough to seat our entire family comfortably and is able to carry a couple of guests as well. We often have visitors from out of town since we have no family where we live, so it's nice to not have to take two cars. The second reason is safety. It's pretty well known that SUV's are among the safest vehicles on the road. When I look at my two kids sitting in their car seats buckled in comfortably behind me, I know that they're as safe as I can make them. Gas mileage just doesn't even factor into the equation where they're concerned.
I'm not saying that any parent that doesn't get an SUV is being a bad parent. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that IMO, that's a good way to keep them safer when we're on the road. Others will feel differently and I have no quarrel with that. I do think that safety is a major factor why soccer moms love SUV's as a vehicle of choice. Practically every mom I know drives an SUV, even the greenest one who makes a living selling organic merchandise.
As for Wendy's assertion that a weakened US dollar played a role in the rise in oil prices, she's absolutely right that it was a factor. It got bad enough that several countries were discussing re-pricing oil under multiple currencies or moving to the Euro. Some countries with currencies pegged to the dollar were thinking of switching to another currency or currencies.
But all things go in waves. The rejection of the EU Constitution and the acknowledgement that the US economy was still the strongest of the major industrialized countries with dropping budget deficits and a stabilizing current accounts deficit is leading to a reversal of fortune. Now people are talking about leaving the Euro and the possibility it may not survive as a currency. So the dollar has strengthened appreciably, just in time for my mother-in-law to visit from Sweden, of course.
I'm unsure how much the strength of the dollar plays into the price now. The price is close to a record high in absolute terms (not adjusted for inflation) but the dollar is much stronger than before. But it did play a role in bursting the $40 and $50 price barriers.
