Spreading awareness about the dangers of SUVs.

“Hello, Abu Dhabi? Yeah, this is Taste. I’m outta here.” Well, you can’t really blame Taste now can you? There’s only so much abuse a sense can take, and the motorists of Abu Dhabi – the same gulf emirate that ordered up the gold-plated Rolls-Royce – have taken things one step too far. Several, actually.

Your eyes do not deceive you, and this is not available for rent to drive your kids to their homecoming. This custom HUMMER H2 convertible was spotted at the Emirates Palace Hotel, a location whose overdeveloped sense of opulence is rivaled only by the horrid monstrosity parked in front.

A topless HUMMER? Okay, the original H1 was available without a roof, but not with a seven-seat, red leather interior, a matching tribal pattern paint job, blistered wheel arches housing chrome wheels and what appears to be a hood scoop packed with a row of driving lights. You know, just in case someone could have missed this tooling around the streets of Abu Dhabi at night.

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Along with a host of other layoffs announced Monday, HUMMER H2 maker AM General announced it was temporarily laying off 200 workers from its civilian line. According to an AM General spokesperson Craig Mac Nab, plant production will be shut down until at least March.

Workers leaving Monday afternoon were largely mum except for one who told local CBS affiliate WSBT, “”Nobody’s safe in this day and age.”

AM General in the past has been able to shift some workers from its civilian operations to its military plant, and that may be an option now for some workers.

“What we are doing at considerable difficulty and expense to the company is moving all eligible employees from the H2 workforce into other parts of the company — finding them jobs,” said Mac Nab. “That will start to happen at the beginning of March. Some of the older employees have already been moved.”

AM General nor HUMMER would speculate on when the H2 production would ramp back up, and Mac Nab added, “Nobody knows what’s going to happen with the H2 plant.”

The loss of jobs can be largely attributed to GM’s announcement Monday to cut 2000 jobs and slow production at nine plants across the country.

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A company that helps auto insurers spot high risks says in a new report that drivers of the H2 and H3 are ticketed by police at more than four times the rate of the average driver – the highest of models it studied.

But contrary to the stereotype of the aggressive sport utility vehicle driver, the report by ISO Quality Planning of San Francisco also found that drivers of Chevrolet Suburbans and Tahoes, big SUVs that share structural and mechanical basics with the H2, are among the least likely to get tickets for moving violations, based on a study of tickets issued nationwide in a 12-month period ended last year by drivers of more than 1.7 million vehicles.

Why the difference? Quality Planning executives can only guess. “The sense of power that Hummer drivers derive from their vehicle may be directly correlated with the number of violations they incur,” president Raj Bhat said in statement. “Or perhaps Hummer drivers, by virtue of their driving position, are less likely to notice road hazards, signs, pedestrians or other drivers.”

On Long Island, homebuilder and renovator Steve Nemiroff of Roslyn Heights said yesterday he has never been ticketed for a moving violation in 163,000 miles of driving the 2003 H2 he bought from North Bay Cadillac Hummer in Great Neck. And he said he does feel safe behind the wheel. “No matter what the weather or where I am,” he said, “I never worry about me getting hurt.”

Quality Planning said other vehicles whose drivers attract above-average numbers of tickets are those that appeal to young people, especially the Toyota/Scion xA, xB and tC; and at least two that appeal to auto enthusiasts, the Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG and CLS63 AMG.

Quality Planning’s survey isn’t the first to single out the drivers of Hummers; the Highway Loss Data Institute, a suburban Virginia-based group affiliated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, says on its Web site that H3s have a “substantially worse than average,” rate of claims for property damage, though not for other types of claims.

The institute says the larger Hummer H2 has a substantially worse-than-average record for property damage and also for bodily injury and even fire and theft claims.

Drivers of these vehicles get the most tickets: *

Hummer H2, H3
Scion tC
Scion xB
Mercedes CLK63AMG
Toyota Solara Coupe
Mercedes CLS63AMG
Scion xA
Subaru Outback
Audi A4
Toyota Matrix

Drivers of these get the least:

Jaguar XJ
Chevrolet Suburban
Chevrolet Tahoe
Chevrolet C/K 2500/3500 pickup
Buick Park Avenue
Mazda 6
Buick Ranier SUV
Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan
Buick Lucerne
GMC Sierra C1500 pickup

*In order, based on percent of average rate per 100,000 miles driven

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It seems the death knell of the Hummer H2 has been sound. Yes, that’s correct, we’ve just received word a decision came down within the last few weeks at the General to end production of the H2. But if you’ve been holding off on buying that H2 with the 28 inch DUBs and sound system with enough power to make you sterile, don’t freak out just yet. Instead of getting the axe right away, we believe the H2 will be allowed to live out its current product life cycle. This probably means the 2011 model year will be the H2’s swan song. Full death-filled conclusion to every environmentalist’s favorite target after the jump.

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“Complaints spur U.S. safety engineers to probe H2 models.”

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14280393p-15088817c.html

Quote :
Engineers at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration are studying how a part called a steering knuckle fractured or failed in the incidents, causing H2 suspensions to collapse or their wheels to separate.

NHTSA engineers also have gathered data about 61 steering knuckle failures on three-quarter-ton GM Suburban and Avalanche pickup trucks that used the same part, according to documents the company submitted to the government as part of the safety probe.

So… GM changes the part to “improve” it’s product, yet can’t admit to there being a problem w/ the part that needed changing… Hummer owners may be that stupid, but the rest of us aren’t… way to go champs!