Posted on 04/10/2014 3:10:31 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
(CNN) -- Smart cars are good for the environment, good for parking in cramped cities and good for a driver's bottom line. Then again, all that thinking gets turned upside down when the vehicles do. That's what happened to four of these fuel-efficient vehicles in San Francisco, tossed aside like a piece of trash. Why? Authorities don't know, leaving Bay Area residents to speculate that anything from pranksters to people upset about hipsters. All Brandon Michael knows is what he saw -- a group of men, in the dark of night, walking up to one Smart car. "(They) all just huddled around it and then just lifted it up and set it on its hind legs," Michael told CNN affiliate KRON.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
>>The same thing was done to Volkswagens 50 years ago. Some were even picked up and moved.
—Supposedly Sid Caesar was upset one day when a VW was parked in his preferred space near a restaurant; he double parked,
got out and picked up the VW and moved it onto the sidewalk then moved his car into his preferred spot
—In John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen gets members from the basketball team to grab a VW owned by the school psychologist, which is parked in HIS preferred parking spot, and carry it into a building where it is placed on stage during “Morning Meeting” (formerly “Chapel”). Further disaster comes when various faculty try to get the locked car back out of the building.
(From sparknotes for the novel : “One frigid New Hampshire morning, Owen discovers that his parking spot has been taken up by Dr. Dolder’s Volkswagen Beetle: whenever Dr. Dolder drinks too much after a party at Mr. White’s, he inevitably leaves the Beetle there. Angry and frustrated, Owen recruits the basketball team to move the Beetle into the school auditorium, where it will be found on the stage for morning meeting. He then parks in front of a different dormitory, pleased with his scheme. But the headmaster finds out about the prank before the meeting begins, and recruits a group of faculty members to help him carry the car back out the door. Unfortunately, the teachers are not as strong as the basketball team, and they roll it from side to side, smashing its windows and mirrors. When Mr. White tries to steer it down the stairs, it careens out of control, overturning and pinning Mr. White inside.”)
There was a German teacher at my high school in the 1960's who had one and some guys on the football team lifted it up and put the front end over a guard rail.........LOL!
It might be white hippie slackers, upset over gentrification of the neighborhoods.
When I was in high school (1980s), one of my good friends had a 1966 MG Midget.
We picked up and moved his car twice during our senior year. The first time was to the sidewalk leading to the school and the second was to the middle of the basketball court in the gym.
Suffice to say, he was not happy with our shenanigans! :)
One is just as likely to get a ticket for illegal dumping as for illegal parking with one of these.
Wonder how biodegradable those smart coffin cars are?
When it happens to someone else, the lib says “they’re acting out against white oppression”.
When it happens to them it’s “how could they! I’m a liberal!”
Exactly what is a smart car anyway?
Indeed!...My 2003 diesel beetle get 51 mpg. It's been a great car. After 11 years and 120,000 miles it has never needed anything except routine maintenance.
I checked out the Smart car. The mileage isn't that great.
Well, not sure about 50 years ago, but I can speak to 33 years ago. We picked up this guy's bug and place it across a concrete irrigation ditch. Front wheels on one side, rears on the other. We were young pre-teens and teens (I was 12), and it took 6 of us. Two in the front and four in the back.
Surprisingly pricey? They are made by Mercedes Benz. That company wrote the book on pricey.
I was guessing it was an RV's tow-behind, but then a gray haired woman exited the restrooms, hopped in and headed east on the Interstate.
We caught up to her a few miles down the road, just as a semi was passing her -- and that little thing did a bigtime prop blast wobble.
Smart Cars, Stupid Drivers.
"But they drove with pride..."
> Smart cars are good for the environment
Coal powered cars.
Safety is relative... Yes the car body can withstand a collision better than another small car, but that’s irrelevant when you are dead because the deceleration was so abrupt your brain splattered onto the inside of your skull and your ribs were turned to splinters that shredded your lungs.
Trust me, odds of you surviving an impact at highway speeds in one of these is next to nil. Sure they shell of the car may not be a mangled mess, but you will be.
Airbags are supposed to be about cushioning such crashes... and so are the supposedly government mandated crush areas on cars. Are smartcars getting a pass on these crush areas? Some highway on-ramps have explicit warnings against unworthy vehicles e.g. bicycles and mopeds.
Airbags help you from smashing into the steering column, but they don’t help with the simple fact that a human body can only decelerate so quickly before things go horribly wrong.
Even if airbags prevent blunt force trauma (and they won’t) they cannot stop the fact your brain will slam into your skull when you decelerate to quickly. Your brain floats in fluid, this fluid acts as a buffer to keep your brain from hitting your skull under normal life experiences, a hit or a fall, but the human body was not designed to go from 65 MPH to 0 MPH in a few inches. That rapid deceleration may stop your body, but your brain keeps moving in that fluid and slams into your skull... Crumple zones and other things that other cars offer add just enough in most cases, distant to decelerate at a rate that will keep this from happening. In cars like this, where you literally are decelerating the human body so quickly, your brains buffer will not prevent it from splattering on your skull.
That airbag may be softer than the steering column, but in the situations with cars like this, at highway speeds your odds of survival are slim. Engineering cannot override physics.
Reality in any small car you are at risk at highway speeds, but the smaller the car is, the shorter the deceleration window is and the shorter the deceleration window is the more likely you aren’t surviving. Its nothing against Smart Engineers, they have designed the thing about as well as they could, but as I said, engineering cannot override physics.
When I was in junior high school, we picked up the band director’s VW and carried it across the parking lot. I heard he was not amused.
In college I heard that someone’s VW was disassembled, carried in pieces to the top of a dormitory and then reassembled. I’m sure that owner was not amused either.
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