Going Green = Seeing Red

I told you it wasn't pretty.

Smart cars seem like a great idea, but the truth is they aren't nearly as Eco-friendly as the satchel-toting, pony-tail wearing hipster that conned you into buying it would have you believe.  In fact, you probably didn't even buy that highway death-trap.  (Have you ever seen a smart car crash?  It's not pretty.)  It was most likely given to you by some corporation in exchange for driving so many miles a week with a huge billboard plastered all over it.   Way to save the environment and sell out at the same time.  You used to be cool man.

I've never had a problem with smart cars until yesterday.  It's bad enough that I had to babysit my kids all day.  They started school on August 15th and since that day they have had exactly one full week of school.  This is due largely to "School Improvement Days" and holidays, or, as I like to call them, "HUGE SCAMS".  But, I'll rant about that another time.

I had just regained a smidgen of freedom from the past three months of Summer Servitude and now I'm back in my cell.  I wasn't about to spend the day at home pouring glasses of chocolate milk, altering the molecular composition of processed chicken, and breaking up bedroom border wars.  What's a guy to do?  Road trip to Grandma's!!!

This sign doesn't tell you that you'll spend the next five hours listening to how you're raising your kids the wrong way.

Whilst on this road trip, I found myself following one of these "cars" for a good 8 miles, 8 miles that happened to take about twenty minutes.  When I see an opportunity to daydream, I seize it.  The results of my on-the-road philosophical journey?  Smart cars are dumb.  You can squeeze two anorexic people in comfortably, but anybody with a weight over 130 is going to be cruising solo.  Top this off with a cargo area that accommodates one gallon of milk and a half loaf of bread and you have yourself a fancy paperweight.

The cars that clowns squeeze into aren't this small.

The only person saving any gas money is the grandma that's pedaling this hunk of plastic down the highway.  The two or three dollars she's saving driving it around are more than cancelled out by the ten to fifteen cars that speed up to get around her.  I'm not falling for it.  I'm not going to waste my wife's hard earned gas money just so you can save a couple of bucks.

I've never watched this, but I assume it's about some chick that works two jobs so her husband can stay home and play Call of Duty all day.

Vans were designed for breeding, not speeding.  Granted, I'd only have to get it up to about 60 or 65 to get around you, but those kinds of speed in a mini-van can blow a rod.  I'm also not about to put my children's safety at risk by speeding out into oncoming traffic, just so I can get to Gram-gram's house two minutes quicker.  To top it all off, that ad for American Insurance or Waste Disposal or whatever it was, only makes me want to completely boycott that company for advertising their product on such a crappy product.

The only way smart cars are going to help the environment is if everybody is cruising down the interstate at 45 miles an hour in one.  Until then, while you're decreasing your carbon footprint, you're increasing road rage and the carbon footprint of the rest of us.  Way to go hippie.  My advice to you conscious drivers pedaling around in these things is this:  Sell your car and buy a moped.  You'll still be able to carry the same amount of people and cargo and moped owners at least have some shred of dignity.  To those of you stuck behind these drivers, put on a good cd, reflect, and tailgate them 'til they rev it up to 55.