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Amy Goodman

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The S.U.V.S, the World’s Most Dangerous Vehicle and How They Got That Way: A Conversation with Reporter Keith Bradsher and the Co-Founder of a Controversial New Anti-S.U.V. Ad Campaign

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WABC in New York has refused to air it. So has KABC and KCBS in Los Angeles. And in the Motor City, WDIV has also said no.

They have all rejected a pair of 30 seconds ads by one of Hollywood’s biggest producers, Lawrence Bender, who is best known his work in producing 'Pulp Fiction' and ’ Good Will Hunting’. The new ad campaign links driving gas-guzzling SUVs to supporting terrorism in oil-producing countries.

The ad campaign is the latest indication of rising criticism of one of America’s most favorite vehicles. Late last year an evangelical environmentalist group made headlines when they unveiled a bumper sticker reading: What Would Jesus Drive?’. Their answer was not an SUV.

And then there is the new book by New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher. It is titled: “High and Mighty: SUVs: the World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way.” Bradsher estimates that the replacement of cars with SUVs is killing about 3,000 people a year, roughly the same amount of people who died in the World Trade Center attack. And the growing popularity of the massive vehicles is causing what Bradsher describes as a highway arms race. At record pace divers are turn in their cars and even smaller SUVs for larger and larger SUVs.

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