My personal experiences line up pretty well. People often think that a small and light car must inherently be a coffin on wheels and no physics or statistics based argument will convince them otherwise.

Moral arguments fail completely too. They give no consideration that heavier vehicles do more damage in pretty much all respects (car crashes, pedestrian hits, road wear, blocking visibility [assuming the vehicle is equally high], etc).

Interesting story! I don't need a car at all--sold my 97 Nissan Maxima V6 over a year ago and haven't looked back since. I'm enjoying riding my rusty US-made Huffy 3-speed. Then again I live in Oakland and work in SF which are both bike-friendly.

Now, here's a story I'd rather have the teller post and i'll see about getting him to. I met a Honda govt relations rep at a recent California climate conference. he's from Los Angeles and told me about a neighborhood vehicle program he started, partially to combat global warming.

His whole street pitched in to buy a scooter, to get groceries and such. Everyone's listed on the insurance for that scooter and chips in for it. Isn't that cool? Very collaborative.

I really don't see the need for everyone to own a stupid car, they take up space, pollute, cost a lot, etc. So anyway, that's a nice model for anyone else considering it.

The response I've gotten from riding cargo trikes and pedicabs as neighborhood family and work vehicles has been much the same.

At times I attract a small group of curious folks and enthusiastic affirmations. But relatively few people find a way to ride bike or trike for much of their neighborhood transportation needs.

The list of excuses is huge.

Recently my wife took a job a few blocks from home. I am embarrased to say that I now need to fit in some transport of my kids and on a tight schedule and so I've chosen to take the car (a Honda Civic Hybrid)on some days. The fact that the car is technically a Low Emission Vehicle ad gets relatively good mileage makes me feel better, but I still feel a bit odd driving.

I do find that I am less sore now than when I was riding every day, hauling 200 - 400 pounds of tools and supplies, and sometimes more. My muscles have some time to recover.

Even so, I find that the american imagination is in bondage to the corporatist narrative. We behave as though we would die without the consumerist comfort bubble. And now that has become mostly true.

The complication is that the consumerist comfort bubble requires inputs that make it a suicidal way of living.

Neighborhood vehicles and SmartCars and the like are good ideas, but we will change only when we are forced out of the current paradigm. By then it is likely to be too late -- possibly it already is.

The Eremozoic Era -- "The Age of Loneliness" as E.O. Wilson calls it -- is descending upon us as we destroy the ecosystem that supports our species. Things will be very noisy for awhile, then they will get very quiet and lonely for anyone left hanging around.

My hope is to continue the effort toward sustainable living and hope that ever more folks will do so also. Maybe it makes no difference, but maybe it does.

More bikes and scooters are popping up on our streets, and ever more people are biking to work in Minneapolis. So that's something encouraging to me.

Well, I live in Germany, and ride a motorcycle, and there are a couple of reasons I wouldn't want a Smart (not talking about the roadster or the four door - neither interest me, but each is a different style not having much to do with the original).

The first is simply the small size - you just can't carry much, and to the extent it carries a bit more than a motorcycle, that 'bit more' just isn't that significant in comparison to having a larger vehicle.

The second is the utter lack of practicality that any two person vehicle has when you need to carry three people. Obviously, this problem is not restricted to the Smart, but that doesn't dismiss the problem. It isn't a family car.

Third, and this may be subtle - the Smart is only fuel efficient when compared to vehicles an American is accustomed to. In Germany, the Smart continues to be considered a fairly wasteful vehicle in regards to its size - in part, because it is so tall. There are a number of larger vehicles (Audi A2 - no longer in production, or the VW Lupo) which have significantly better mileage.

The Smart is a neat car, no question, and it certainly has its place in an urban setting, as long as you know where the original vision of the Smart comes from - from the same man that developed the Swatch. That's right, the Smart was originally conceived of to be a cheap throwaway consumer product, one which would be an accessory to a hip urban lifestyle.

Driving a Smart is many things, but the fact remains it was intended to be was a statement about how fashionable the driver of it was - the same sort of thing that seems to propel American Prius sales. However, it is reasonable to guess that Toyota was surprised by this quirk of the American market (along with dramatically rising fuel prices due to a couple of hurricanes), while for the Smart, it turns out that one of its largest customer bases here are home health care nursing agencies - the vehicle is easy to park, is cheap and fuel efficient enough to be economical, and is fairly well built for longer term service. From hipster accessory to oldster life support - the strange career of the Smart is likely to take another turn in the U.S., but I have yet to imagine what it will be. If I want to be Kunstlerian, it will be one of the last gasps of the commuting lifestyle - it just seems so 'practical' to keep driving instead of changing how we live.