I"m not going to name...

I"m not going to name any of the warring activists in this column, because that would only give them the free - and often dangerously misleading - publicity they seek for themselves as they pathetically jump on to the anti-4x4 bandwagon.

So far, we"ve had everything from a factory production line being trespassed on, sabotaged and stopped, to privately owned SUVs being vandalised, issued with fake parking tickets, or drivers of off-roaders being verbally abused and spat at.

The latest stunt is a seemingly respectable bunch of college types, described as scientists, researchers and doctors, grabbing cheap headlines by suggesting that these vehicles should carry health warnings. Why? Because, it is argued, if they"re involved in collisions with pedestrians, they cause more injuries than conventional cars.

Where would we be without academics stating the blindingly obvious, eh? Thanks to their words of wisdom and proposed four-wheel-drive health warnings, I now know I stand a better chance of survival if I"m run over by a small, light Citroen C1 city car than a large, high, heavy, GM Hummer on/off roader. They"ll be telling us next that a blow from a cricket ball is more damaging than being hit by a shuttlecock.

So, given that 4x4s are often (but not always) bulkier, weightier and more robust than two-wheel-drive cars, they will often (but not always) hurt you more if you step in front of one and come into contact with it or, alternatively, the driver is at fault and makes contact with you. Fine, I accept all that.

But why do the 4x4-haters identify only the vehicles they loathe, while conveniently ignoring others which are far more dangerous? Why don"t they study the relative safety of ALL vehicles? I suspect that they"re not interested, as off-roaders would do rather well. Not as well as (in order of "pedestrian-friendliness") bicycles, mopeds, scooters, motorbikes, two-wheel-drive cars and small car-derived vans. Better, though, than black taxis, large vans, buses, coaches, trams, lorries and even trains, which occasionally cross public streets where pedestrians walk. I"d also add specialist vehicles, such as milk floats, refuse trucks and street-sweeping and/or drain-clearing lorries.

I make that about 17 different types of vehicles which are on the streets with the potential to be in collisions with pedestrians, and a very real ability to hurt them to one degree or another. Why the anti-4x4 activists, the academics and road-safety experts don"t admit to all this, I don"t know. Maybe they"d like to drop me a line and explain themselves, and the wholly incomplete messages they"re feeding the public.