The Trouble With SUVs.

EVERY weekday morning on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, a line of cars inches over the Santa Monica Mountains from the Valley to the L.A. basin. A very high percentage of them are sport utility vehicles. Nearly all of them are piloted by a single driver with no passengers.

Laurel Canyon might have a higher proportion of SUVs than other L.A. routes because of the demographics of Hollywood Hills commuters, but the same scene is played out every workday on every major corridor in the city. Two-ton, four-wheel-drive vehicles built for navigating icy mountain roads or muscling through mud and gravel are used to commute along the treacherous wastes of Olympic Boulevard, or the vicious terrain of the San Diego Freeway.

Beyond the aggravation of small-car drivers who can't see the road ahead because of the monster machine in front of them, there are serious negative consequences to all this unnecessary automotive muscle.

The SUV has effectively replaced the station wagon, and even the minivan, as the standard American family car. There are plenty of practical reasons for the phenomenon; the vehicles are perceived to be safer, they can handle difficult road conditions and they're extremely roomy. Yet for the vast majority of SUV owners, the machines are used to shuttle around large groups of people only on the weekends. During the week, it's a commuter car.

The amount of waste and damage caused by these vehicles now that they've been adopted on a mass basis is staggering. As cars are replaced by heavy trucks with knobby off-road tires, L.A.'s roads take a beating. With bigger engines, SUVs emit more pollutants than cars. And they have a voracious appetite for gasoline, increasing American demand at a time when OPEC producers are restricting supply - inevitably contributing to the rise in pump prices.

The demand for SUVs speaks to something fundamental about the American psyche - and perhaps even more fundamental about the L.A. psyche, since car culture has long dominated the region. A big, powerful car, towering over the other vehicles on the road, enhances the driver's sense of power. Most people don't buy SUVs because they really need an off-road vehicle; a minivan could just as effectively shuttle the kids to soccer games. Yet a minivan is fundamentally unsexy, and not particularly powerful either.

Even with gas prices rising, there is no sign that demand for SUVs is slacking. With the average price of a gallon of premium gas in California now standing at $ 1.988, it costs $79.52 to fill an SUV's 40-gallon tank. Yet a recent news report cited a 17 percent rise in SUV sales in January and February, compared to a 14 percent rise in overall vehicle sales. Luxury SUV sales were up a whopping 43 percent in the same period.

In California, business (with the exception of the oil industry) tends to pay the price for our love of big cars. Environmental regulators continue to crack down on emissions by factories. On March 18, the South Coast Air Quality Management District imposed an even stricter standard on industrial polluters, forcing about two dozen local companies to spend around $1.2 million a year to get their emissions in compliance. This despite the fact that 90 percent of dangerous emissions come not from factories, but from motor vehicles. And a heavy truck pumps out a heck of a lot more pollutants than a mid-sized sedan.

SUVs are useful, fun machines, and it would be silly to suggest that people stop buying them. But it would make a heck of a lot more sense to leave the Ford Explorer in the garage when setting out for the office every morning and take the Camry instead.