It is unethical to buy an SUV

ok before i start, i would like to point out that my burden in this debate is not to show that buying an SUV is ethical, rather i must simply show that buying an SUV is NOT unethical. therefore the position i will be taking in this debate is that buying an SUV is neither ethical or unethical, but rather amoral. One cannot place a moral or ethical bearing on an object. An example would be buying a pocket knife. is it ethical or unethical? well, it is impossible to tell. it can be used for woodcarving, or cutting food, or boy scouts, yet at the same time it can be used for stabbing another person. therefore, the act of buying a knife cannot be weighed on an ethical scale, only how it is used can be. The same it true with an SUV. No one can say that buying an SUV is unethical, because no one knows how it will be used. Maybe a disabled family will use it to make transportation easier. Or it could be used by the police, forest rangers, or in a way to help lost hikers and travelers. The most important point when arguing ethics however, is that ethics are not object specific. going back to the knife example, we might say that stabbing someone with a knife is unethical, but whether or not a knife was used is irrelevant. Stabbing someone in general is unethical. It doesn't matter if it was a knife, fork, pen, sword, stick, nail. Stabbing, and hurting someone is unethical, we do not need to define the object. This ties in with the argument you have made. your statement of, "SUVs use a lot of gas, more than most other cars, so there is more gas emissions and contributes to global warming like two regular cars" basically states SUV's waste gas, which harms the atmosphere. But if you are arguing ethics, it doesn't matter if it is an SUV or not, the statement would be, "wasting gas is harmful to the environment, thus unethical. OK so i have shown that buying an SUV is not ethical or unethical, but amoral, so now id like just to go through and attack some of your arguments. ---SUV owners collectively paid almost $9 billion – $350 each – more for gasoline in 2002 in the United States than they would if SUVs were as fuel-efficient as the average car. this is just a statement about how SUVs use more gas. this doesn't mean buying one is unethical. If a family can meet all its requirements by using only one car, but has two to make life easier, and do more things, is that unethical? of course not. They have the right to have another car. ---The fuel efficiency of engines increases by an average of 1.9 percent per year, but automakers chose to use these efficiency gains to increase acceleration and add weight to vehicles (mostly in SUVs) instead of increasing fuel economy. are you trying to say increasing the acceleration of a vehicle is unethical? That just doesn't make sense. it isn't a question of ethics. ---SUVs are dangerous to other motorists. SUVs are much larger and bulkier than most cars on the road. If an SUV crashed into a smaller vehicle, the passengers in the smaller vehicle would be in greater danger than if they were crashed against another smaller car This is not true. SUVs are not dangerous. A bad driver driving one is. But the vehicle itself is not more dangerous than any other, it is just a matter of how it is used. For example: it i drive and SUV 20 miles an hour, but someone else is driving a Prius at 120 which is more dangerous? the prius. so again its how they are used. not the objects themselves. ---While SUV occupants face significant risks from rollover crashes, occupants of other cars face major risks from SUVs as well. In frontal crashes, SUVs kill 4.3 car drivers for every one SUV driver who is killed. see my previous argument. but another point, if someone with a family wants to keep their kids safe, it would be a better choice to have an SUV. so finally, SUV are amoral. It doesnt matter if you love them or hate them, you cannot place a ethical definition on them, because it doesn't apply