Lawyers gone wacky

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | America's state attorneys general were getting in touch with their wacky side this week. That is, assuming the comedy of their new campaign for SUV safety is, er, intentional.

It's certainly one of the most bizarre public-safety efforts ever. The AGs of Connecticut, Florida, Iowa and Vermont helped launch the $30 million ad campaign at the Central Park Zoo on Monday — and its key feature debuted on the Today Show next to a befuddled Katie Couric.

"Esuvee," a truck-faced furry monster, is somehow supposed to scare teenage drivers about the dangers of SUVs. "The yearlong national consumer education campaign aims to reduce incidences of sport utility vehicle rollovers, especially among young male drivers, who are more prone to these incidences [sic]," declares the campaign's Web site.

You really have to check out that site — esuvee.com — to appreciate how head-scratchingly outlandish and dopey this campaign is. "Esuvee can be found in Sea Level as well as at mountainous altitudes," readers are informed. "They roam near rivers, lakes, swamps and football tailgate parties."

Less cute or defensible, though, are some of the ideas behind it all — assumptions echoing the efforts against tobacco companies in the last decade.

The AGs are now working hand in glove with the consumer and environmental activists who spent a decade trying to demonize SUVs — the quintessential mom machine. The campaign has followed a predictable trajectory: Ford, which suffered an image problem thanks to blowout-related accidents involving its Ford Explorers, was the first target. Already suffering from bad press and lawsuits from accident victims, the company soon found itself in the sights of the AGs for "deceptive advertising." As Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said back in 2003, "Too many ads have SUVs zipping around like sports cars, which they are not."

Few Americans will have trouble telling a Chevy Suburban from a Lamborghini. But that's not the point. Ford reached into its pockets and coughed up $51 million. Now that cash is paying for the Esuvee propaganda.

The AGs, of course, are guilty of originating nothing here. They're just climbing on another bandwagon. The anti-SUV march was already in full swing when, in 2003, Joan Claybrook of the Naderite group Public Citizen trooped before Congress to declare the vehicles "a bad bargain for society and a nightmare for American roads." And who could forget Arianna Huffington's deranged campaign trying to imply that SUVs caused the 9/11 attacks?

That doesn't mean that saving the lives of teenage drivers isn't a good cause. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for 15- to 20-year-olds. But the problem isn't SUVs, but inexperienced drivers and the failure to wear seatbelts, which was a factor in half of all teenage auto fatalities in 2003.

The AGs will surely maintain that they're only interested in saving lives, but the publicity campaign will also be helpful to trial lawyers by conditioning the public to assume that SUVs are somehow unreasonably dangerous. Trial lawyers, in turn, are big donors to the political aspirations that seem to lurk in the heart of every attorney general from New York's Eliot Spitzer to Washington's Christine Gregoire.

But most Americans don't need to be reminded that teenagers make accident-prone drivers: They get the message from the stratospheric insurance rates they pay so their 17-year-old can climb behind the wheel.

Esuvee is somehow supposed to convince teenage boys that they're not invincible behind the wheel. That's got about as much chance of success as the campaign to convince Americans to end their love affair with the vehicle.

The beast has probably drawn more attention from executives in Detroit — who know that once the public is programmed to pay lip service to "the perils of SUVs," plaintiffs attorneys won't be far behind.

Now that's scary.

JWR contributor Collin Levey is a weekly op-ed columnist at the Seattle Times. Before joining the Times in September 2003, she was an editorial writer and editor for The Wall Street Journal. Comment by clicking here.

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