I thought the police were having issues with high petrol bills. Apparently not, as they’re going to patrol nightspots in Hummers.
Maybe instead they should have gone for Police Priuses. They’d be distinctive.
Did you know that a Prius actually has more legroom than a Hummer H3? Seriously, inspired by a comment from Tony H, I checked. In shoulder and headroom it’s about the same, but in the rear seats, the Prius has 90mm more legroom.
Yet the Prius burns about a third the amount of fuel of an H3.
Amazing.
12 replies on “Humming along”
Hummers are a heap of shit, excuse my french, but they are. They burn so much gas, and the sales have dropped 40%.
The police would be better patrolling the streets on bikes or golf buggies and actually having a visual police presence on the streets and staff at all train stations. Read the Herald Sun today about crime on trains.
It’s great to see this was well thought out policy and not another stunt funded by the taxpayer!
Great post, well done!
Isn’t that just what we need, more ‘aggro’ around these nightclubs, Not. If anything, we need police on the street, walking.
I suspect the Hummers are chosen for their intimidation factor.
How’d you feel if a Hummer drove up onto the curb behind you – and blasted its horn?
I parked next to a Hummer H3 last week and was amazed at how poorly designed and inefficiently laid out it was. They look impressive, but they have lots of problems. Interior space is tiny, as you pointed out. The A-pillars are huge and would be hard to see around. The windows are very small. It has leaf springs at the back! It would ride like a ute. To top it all off, it has wheels designed to look like they have built-in tyre inflation and monitoring, but it’s fake.
The police should have grabbed a fleet of people movers so they could pull up at the kerb and pour seven beefy cops onto the footpath to deal with the drunks.
I’d think they were some wanker Michael and flip `em the bird.
I don’t think the hummers quite cut it. In fact, I would suggest the police travel around in Heavily-Fortified Crusader tanks. Should an assault occur, and the anti-tank ballistic cruise missiles should deliver swift justice.
Should the brawl escalate, and perhaps the police air division should be called in. This will involve a MiG bomber to drop a 1000 ton atom bomb on King Street Melbourne.
Problem solved.
My job here is done.
*walks off wearing nasty little grin*
Nice one Daniel.
Funnily enough – I was in the back of a Prius the other day (Swinburne’s NCS has one . . .) and I swear it had more headroom than the Hummer I rode in. I suspect the Hummer stats (parhaps all manufacturers) are ‘best case scenario’.
On that note – I recall once reading (RACV magazine, maybe?) that when Holden do their ‘official’ fuel consumption figures, they (allegedly) remove everything possible from the car that’s not required to be there. I think it included (for example) removing the spare wheel and jack – if not at least swapping it for one of those skinny spare wheels.
I bet the police Hummers were bought to intimidate – but that (perhaps counter intuitively) smacks of a backward step? I mean, increased personal policing (coppers on the street) is surely more productive in reducing crime in a holistic sense, than seeing one or two cops breeze by, highly disconnected from people, in a car that screams ‘aggression’? I thought modern police forces had learned that lesson already. But to be fair, I’m betting they are too understaffed to put more on the beat.
What hope do we have when the Victorian Government makes a decision like this? While the increased fuel usage is insignificant in terms of VicPol’s car fleet, the message it sends is significant.
Sorry to rant, but this kind of thing makes me despair of Federation. The nine Australian Governments make it impossible for the nation to deal with urgent issues in a timely manner. There are always a few of the cats that will run their own crazy way. I’ll stop there before I get carried away – this is about hummers, not Federation.
Note, by the way, that the Hummers are being loaned for free by Holden, the distributor. Dunno if they’re paying the fuel costs though. I guess Holden are desperate to try and get some publicity, with sales dropping.
I heard that a lot of the space in the passenger cabin of a Hummer is taken up by the rear of the engine, which protrudes into the space between the driver and passenger. Maybe this is the case for the very large military, and original civilian versions, the H3s are tiny by comparison.