A camera phone tipster sends this shot of wreckage on a residential street in Boerum Hill. This morning, a speeding SUV managed to build up enough force to plow through parked cars, take out the iron gate, and demolish a good chunk of the ground floor. FDNY, fearing a cave-in, has propped up the front of the building. Mercifully, no one was hurt. We're told that the driver lost control due to a seizure, though our source says that traffic engineering has also made this block more susceptible to crashes.

...since DOT replaced the stop sign at the intersection before our block [with a traffic light], we have had three incidents where cars have gotten up to such a speed they've flipped over and took out a bunch of cars.

When this same traffic light was installed two years ago, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, who now heads up the public plaza program at DOT, found it inexplicable.

Update: Curbed has more photos and details about how this happened. The driver kept trying to maneuver the berserk vehicle until the wheels were in the air:

...a lady tried to parallel park on front of the house, and her accelerator got stuck. After punching the hole, she sped back onto the street and smashed up a few cars, before flipping over.

After the jump, the mammoth SUV that caused this destruction.

A photo from the scene appears after the jump. Warning: it's an unsettling image.

Shamoon, 31, was on her way home to Greenpoint when she was hit. The driver remained at the scene and was not charged. According to reports, police say Shamoon was crossing against the light.

Shamoon worked as a college instructor. She was a member of Transportation Alternatives and Time's Up, and a supporter of the New York City Streets Renaissance. She was also a musician, playing in several local bands.

A funeral mass will be hold for Shamoon tomorrow, followed by a New Orleans-style Jazz Parade and wake celebration. Details are available here.

From Dick Locher of the Chicago Tribune comes a cartoon complement to Judith Warner's essay in the Times last Friday, declaring that SUVs have outlived any "utility" owners may once have derived from them.

Like media outlets everywhere, CNNMoney.com is reporting with greater frequency on rising fuel prices, with headlines like "Six fixes for pricey gasoline" and "Bad news for Detroit: Miles per gallon." In a recent online poll, the financial website asked a question that is surely on the minds of many Americans: "The next vehicle I buy will be...?" In the non-random sample of 42,275 respondents, more people said they are leaning towards a bike than a truck or SUV.

Sure, this poll is totally un-scientific, its results not a reliable indicator that bike makers should ramp up production. Nevertheless, it is a signpost for everyone wondering whether bicycles are creeping into the mainstream consciousness as a practical solution to rising fuel prices. When a major national news outlet starts including human-powered vehicles in its polls, I think the answer is yes.

Looks like Chrysler has figured out a novel way to move their 2008 model gas guzzlers off the lot. Sign up for their new "Let's Refuel America!" credit card and they'll lock in the price of gas at $2.99/gallon for three years.

That's right, it's a 36-month guarantee that you don't have to think about moving over to a more fuel efficient car, commuting by bus, lobbying your elected officials for a national passenger rail system or the fact that Chrysler is essentially writing checks to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria and Vladimir Putin on your behalf.

Before you rush out to purchase yourself a new, 13 mpg Dodge Durango and set up shop at the nearest pump as a gasoline reseller, you'd better read the fine print. The program caps the number of annual "price-protected gallons" that Chrysler will actually pay for. If I understand their "gallon allotment calculation" correctly (Charlie Komanoff, feel free to step in here and do some math), Durango owners get a maximum of 2,400 discounted gallons over three years. As for global warming, oil war, suburban sprawl and American economic disintegration, Chrysler is offering a lifetime guarantee.

The Daily News today has the sickening story of an off-duty NYPD officer beating an NYPD traffic agent for ticketing his girlfriend's illegally parked car in the Bronx. The capper: the agent was reportedly cuffed and taken to the precinct, while the cop he says assaulted him has not been charged with a felony, though the state just adopted a law stiffening penalties for attacks on traffic agents.

"If the NYPD doesn't show respect to us, what will happen with regular civilians?" said Traffic Agent Eric Celemi.

Celemi, 29, says Officer Eladro Mata beat him bloody last month after he ticketed the double-parked car in the Bronx.

Mata has been stripped of his badge and gun, but not charged with a felony, despite a law signed last month by Gov. Paterson that makes assaulting a traffic cop a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Celemi contends he was not only beaten, but then hauled off to the 48th Precinct stationhouse in handcuffs for following his traffic supervisor's order to remain at the scene and wait for an ambulance.

Shocked and bleeding from the ear, Celemi was jeered by the crowd as an NYPD lieutenant ordered him cuffed.

"I had been writing tickets and people standing on the street were applauding when I got arrested," Celemi said.

"I always try to treat people in a nice way but I understand people don't like traffic agents. I knew that before I got the job and I learned it even more now."

Not that this is news to Streetsbloggers, but the emotional intensity that seems to be part and parcel of car ownership is as frightening as it is mind-boggling. (Full disclosure: recovering auto addict here.) Officer Celemi's story -- particularly the part about onlookers cheering as he was led away -- brought to mind the "Parking Wars" reality show, a chronicle of the incessant abuse parking agents take at the hands of self-righteous motorists. But it also reminded me of the reaction to the suspension of alternate side parking in Park Slope: not only the near-orgasmic response from drivers, but the portrayal by the media (the Times in particular) of the city's free parking culture as a charming New York quirk, rather than a toxic, destructive, borderline diagnosable obsession.

Of course, in the case of Officer Mata, what can we expect at the precinct level when the air of entitlement wafts down from above. In 2004, NYPD Transportation Department Chief Michael Scagnelli had an agent suspended for ticketing his unmarked SUV. At least she wasn't beaten and arrested, too.

Photo: Too Many Notes/Flickr

Tonight the DOT will be presenting their plans for improved Manhattan Bridge bike access via the Chrystie Street bike lane to Community Board 3. This plan is going to involve the removal of parking along Chrystie Street, so it is anticipated that there will be resistance at the Community Board level.

It would be great to have supportive cyclists in the room. The details are as follows:

What: CB 3 Transportation Committee Meeting on Chrystie Street Bike Lane

When: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 6:30 PM

Where: Confucius Plaza, Community Room - 33 Bowery (at Bayard Street)

The Manhattan Bridge is the second busiest East River crossing for NYC cyclists. From 2005-2006 (most recent counts), the Manhattan Bridge saw a 90.3% increase in daily cycling trips (829-1,578). As the numbers of cyclists continue to grow, so will daily crossing over this vital connector between Manhattan & Brooklyn.

Chrystie Street is one of the most common routes for cyclists commuting to and from Brooklyn on the Manhattan Bridge. It is also a 'through' and 'local' truck route. (http://home2.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/uppertruckroute.pdf)

According to the City's Bicyclist Fatalities and Serious Injuries Report, 1996-2005, trucks are twice as deadly to cyclists as regular vehicles, even SUVs. The same study found that of all the fatalities between those years, only one occurred in a bike lane.

T.A.'s www.crashstat.org highlights the need for traffic calming and improved design on Chrystie Street as well.

A bike lane along Chrystie Street is a necessary safety measure for cyclists and for pedestrians. This plan will also involve many pedestrian treatments along this dangerous corridor. The number of people the bike and pedestrian improvements will serve far outweighs the number of people who will impacted by any loss in car parking.

The folks at Jabberwonk have put together a simple gas tax "holiday" calculator. Enter your car's fuel efficiency and the miles you expect to drive, and the calculator spits out how much you would save this summer if the gas tax were suspended.

The formula assumes that the full 18.4 cents per gallon will be passed on to the consumer, an outcome most economists view as extremely unlikely. Even so, it's difficult to come up with a scenario in which someone would save more than $100. But if you own a 16 mpg SUV and commute 50 miles each way, and drive 800 miles (roundtrip) for your vacation, that would do it. More likely, typical savings would work out to about $18 (and for many readers of this blog, probably zero).

Meanwhile, not content to let the gas tax holiday remain a pocketbook pander for the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton says she's going to put the question to Congress. Is it savvy politics to keep this idea in the news cycle -- running contrary to the experts' consensus -- or will voters sniff out a gimmick?

A Department of Transportation study released Friday shows just how out of control placard parking is in Manhattan.

The 187-page report [PDF], accompanied by some 223 pages of maps, was undertaken to assess "how placards are used in Lower Manhattan," and to determine if placard users are taking up more space than is allotted for them. The results should come as no surprise.

Key findings include:

• Curb parking spaces in Lower Manhattan are highly utilized, with 93% of all legal on-street parking spaces in Lower Manhattan occupied during the peak hours (9AM-5PM).
  
• Vehicles with agency and law enforcement permits, when combined with marked official vehicles (e.g., police cruisers, DOT bucket trucks), are a large share of the vehicles parked on-street, comprising 43% of vehicle-hours from 9AM-5PM. Law Enforcement placards are the major component of these vehicles (23% of all vehicle-hours). (A vehicle-hour is one vehicle parking for one hour. Thus, a vehicle that parks for three hours uses three vehicle-hours.)
  
• Nearly 1 in 8 permitted vehicles were illegally parked at a bus stop, crosswalk, fire hydrant, driveway, or were double-parked.
  
• Placards displayed by 9% of all agency and law enforcement permitted vehicles were deemed to be inauthentic or illegitimate in some way.

• Vehicles with agency and law enforcement permits use more of the parking supply than is allocated to them, occupying 49% more spaces than are allocated to them during the hours of 9AM-5PM.
  
• Vehicles with permits take space away from other designated uses such as curb space for commercial vehicles - 22% of loading zone spaces were removed from the commercial supply due to permitted vehicles parking in those spaces.
  
• Similarly, 18% of metered spaces were removed from the general public's supply due to permitted vehicles parking in those spaces.
  
• Permitted vehicles park for longer periods, on average, than other vehicles, thus consuming disproportionately more space hours. Agency and law enforcement permits park on average for 4.0 hours compared with 2.7 hours for privately owned vehicles.
  
• 42% of agency business permits park outside of their dedicated parking supply for more than three hours, which is in violation of their permit.
  
• Over the course of a typical day (9AM-5PM) over 3,300 vehicles in Lower Manhattan display an LE permit, resulting in nearly 14,000 vehicle hours. This represents almost one-quarter of the total observed vehicle-hours in Lower Manhattan.
  
• The peak demand for agency and law enforcement permits is 5,805 and 13,494 vehicle- hours respectively, while their peak supply is only 7,052 and 5,937 space-hours, respectively. Therefore, while agency permits are technically parking within their allocated supply, vehicles with law enforcement permits use 127% more space hours than are designated for them from 9AM-5PM. This may indicate that the space allotment for law enforcement is not sufficient for its needs during those hours.
  

Data for the study was collected from September through November of 2006. 

Continuing its coverage of the placard abuse epidemic, the Times has a nice summary of the report, pointing out that the "biggest contributors to the parking crunch were vehicles with law enforcement placards" -- which "are also the most likely to park in an unsafe way."

Among the nearly 700 vehicles with placards that were spotted parked in crosswalks or at hydrants, double-parked or parked in other hazardous ways, more than half belonged to law enforcement.

And check out the guy who pays someone to drive his SUV around all day so he won't get a parking ticket. 

If you read the comments on the previous post, then you know something interesting is in the works for Prince Street. Next Tuesday, Community Board 2's Transportation Committee will consider a proposal to turn a six-block stretch of Prince Street, from Lafayette to West Broadway, into a car-free zone on Sundays from 11am to 6pm. The pilot project would likely run from Memorial to Labor Day. The idea for this long-sought reallocation of street space emerged from discussions between DOT and the SoHo Partnership, the neighborhood's innovative welfare-to-work program.

Not surprisingly, an opposition movement has already sprung into action. Faithful Streetsblog readers will recall the SoHo Alliance as the neighborhood group that seems to specialize in fighting street vendors, new bike lanes, sidewalk widenings and, generally, any livable street improvement that threatens to diminish long-time SoHo residents' access to on-street parking.

A tipster reports that the Alliance is papering the neighborhood with flyers arguing against the pilot project. Here's a sample bullet point from the flyer, which can be found in its entirety, below:

The current do-wop group will attract other noisy street performers to entertain the increased crowds of tourists. Food vendors will likely spring up. Will Jugglers and mimes be far behind?

Though the specter of mime-filled streets truly is terrifying (and quite politically savvy -- I mean, who's going to speak up for the mimes?) does a bad case of coulrophobia outweigh the potential benefits of car-free Sundays?

As it is, Prince Street is jam-packed with pedestrians and vendors on the weekend yet the majority of the public right-of-way is hogged up by a horn-honking, exhaust-spewing, barely-moving armada of SUV's and luxury sedans. When London pedestrianized some of its most popular shopping streets, it led to a bonanza for local businesses, a PR coup for the city's sustainability agenda and a generally nicer, more pleasant public realm for residents and tourists to enjoy.

If you want to help make a car-free Prince Street a reality, then speak up at Community Board 2's Transportation Committee meeting next Tuesday, March 11 at 7:30pm. The meeting will be at the NYU Silver Building, 32 Waverly Place, room 713. You can be sure the other guys will be there.

The Soho Alliance flyer can be found after the jump...

Here's one for the anti-pricing populists. 

Scared of or repulsed by public transportation, too impatient to wait for a cab, and burdened with excess cash, more well-to-do parents are enlisting driver-cum-nannies to ferry the kids to school and soccer practice, according to a recent article in the Observer.

Say hello to the "Dranny."

Jill Zarin, an Upper East Side mother of a teenager, who together with her husband operates Zarin Fabrics and Home Furnishing, is a "dranny" pioneer, having employed one for a decade ... and calls the hire a practical investment. "Cabs are exorbitant!" said Ms. Zarin, who is featured on the upcoming Bravo TV series The Real Housewives of New York City. "I took a cab from 60th street to downtown the other day and it cost me $20."

Crystal Sikora, a classical singer and mother of a 7-year-old son, lives uptown but chauffeurs her son, who had an unspecified traumatic experience on the school bus, to and from his downtown private school in her black Dodge Durango. "I spend four hours a day in the car," she said. "My son loves it because I have a DVD player and we spend quiet time in the car together. I like control of my nice, clean car."

Of course all those Durangos and Denalis are clogging up the streets, leading schools to spend extra money on personnel to direct traffic and neighbors to complain about rampant double parking. And though police are reportedly hesitant to ticket cars of prominent families, some dranny employers feel victimized when their $60K-per-year drivers can't park wherever they want ("Bloomberg's ticket marathon is out of control," said Barbara S.).

The New York Times ran a similar article about a year ago, focusing on congestion and safety issues at the 92nd Street Y, brought by a surge of chauffeur-driven pre-schoolers.

In the interest of sanity, the Observer also talked to parents who are put off by the dranny trend. Said one: "Part of growing up [in the city] was learning how to budget transportation time, how to choose the best route and how to take responsibility for ourselves. The rewards: self-confidence, freedom to explore the city and a treasure of experiences."

At least one kid feels the same way.

Allyson Shapiro, Ms. Zarin's 10th-grader, is one of the sheltered kids finally allowed to explore the glory of mass transit. "This year I started taking the train," she said, and marveled: "It was so fast!"

Photo: Jennifer S. Altman/New York Times

Streetsblog reader George Henik directs our attention to the excellent new BBC documentary "Road Rage," a British version of Contested Streets -- minus the advocacy -- that examines the intensifying conflict between motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians in the UK. The Beeb describes the situation as a war of succession: 

For 40 years, Britain's motorists have been the kings of the road, claiming their title through tax discs and fuel duty. But now the balance of power is shifting. There are new pretenders to the throne. Pedestrians and cyclists want equal rights on the road, and this has sparked a war. Our roads are now a battleground.

There are 27 million cars on Britain's roads, an increase of over 5 million in 10 years. But there are also 23 million bicycles fighting with them for road space.

The whole hour is well worth watching, but here are some highlights:

• 4:21 - Great clips from a pro-biking TV spot sponsored by Transport for London and the Mayor's Office.
• 8:42 - Hilarious segment comparing a bus load of chatty kids to an SUV-driving, road rage-suppressing father taking his son to school.
  
• 16:10 - A bit about cyclists who jump red lights and the bobbies who ticket them.
  
• 31:15 - A look at one of London's least pedestrian-friendly intersections, Henley's Corner, and how one elderly man negotiates it.
  
• 51:50 - Competitive cyclist Emma Davies-Jones talks about why she moved from Britain to the more bike-friendly Belgium.
• 52:56 - Critical Mass in London.
  

And yes, somewhere in there are clips of the World Naked Bike Ride.

Speaking of Contested Streets, Stefan Schaefer's doc about NYC gridlock has been picked up by the Sundance Channel. It will air sometime after April 1st, details to come.

Last year rapper Common signed with Lincoln as the "new face" of its Navigator SUV. The first TV spot of the campaign debuted in November on NBC's Sunday night NFL broadcast, and continues in heavy rotation during the playoffs. In the ad, shot in Chicago, Common reflects on his roots in the Windy City, his voiceover set to a modern urban beat as he glides a shiny black Nav through unobstructed streets.

"The city means so much to me," he says. "Every time I come home it looks more beautiful than ever."

Just then, the Navigator passes under an elevated train track. Common points to the windshield.

"Back in the day that was my ride right there," he muses. "The El."

The El is in Common's rear view mirror now, literally, as he cruises through his old neighborhood, rolling down the Navigator's power windows to greet friends who aren't similarly ensconced inside a $50,000 SUV. Presumably, some of those friends are among the hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans who still rely on the El, even as it flirts with collapse due to years of budgetary neglect.

After Common parks to pose with the Navigator in front of the Regal Theater, where he performed his first show (no circling the block, as there still isn't another vehicle in sight), the commercial closes with the tagline, "True power is wielded quietly," and implores us to "Reach Higher."

'Cause if you don't, those truly powerful Navigator drivers might not see you. 

 
Here's a pretty repulsive ad for Ford's Escape Hybrid SUV. In it, a middle-aged father and his middle school-aged daughter are strolling from their leafy suburban home to the family truckster -- a green one, natch -- when the daughter asks to be dropped off a block from the theater where, we're to assume, her friends are hanging out.

At first you think that, considering dad's expanding waistline, she's looking to get some exercise. But it turns out she's embarrassed to be seen in an SUV, since "people in that [presumably urban] part of town are riding bikes and have hybrids and stuff."

Ah, but the family truckster is a hybrid, dad points out nonchalantly.

"Like a hybrid hybrid?" asks the daughter.

"I don't know what a 'hybrid hybrid' is, but yes," dad replies.

Queue voice over proclaiming the 34 MPG Escape hybrid "the most fuel efficient SUV on Earth."

Cut to father and daughter driving away, as daughter, now inaudible, explains that an anemic 34 miles-per-gallon hardly qualifies the Escape as a "hybrid hybrid" -- any more than the Chevy Tahoe is the "Green Car of the Year" -- and asks dad why the family can't move closer to the theater so he and mom might stave off heart disease and she wouldn't have to be ferried around in "the greenwashing machine."

Video via Dailymotion

In the last year alone, the most innovative display of activism has sprung from the Streetpanthers, a band of thirtysomethings who under cover of night prowl the streets of Athens slapping the vehicles of egregious parking violators with Day-Glo orange stickers depicting a donkey in a car above the message, "I park wherever I want."

More than 250,000 stickers have been distributed nationwide since the group's Web site began operation in July.

"We're not subversive. We're not confrontational. And we don't want to cause damage to anyone's property," he said, slapping a sticker on the windshield of a Jeep squeezed across a sidewalk on a narrow passageway called Arahovis Street.

The driver was nowhere to be seen. But a few feet ahead on Arahovis Street, they spotted a red Peugeot backing over a strip of ribbed paving that helps blind people with canes navigate sidewalks. The middle-aged motorist, who had just emerged from the car, was aghast when a pair of Streetpanthers swooped down, pasting a donkey sticker on his windshield.

"That same stunt cost my fiancée a broken rib cage over the summer," the blind Streetpanther, Stathis Zachariades, said to the driver, as a handful of bystanders cheered him on before asking the Streetpanthers for some of their stickers.

Across Europe, other activists have turned to imaginative, and legal, means to fight indifferent motorists.

Two years ago, a French group known as the Deflated discovered that letting the air out of tires was legal so long as no damage was caused. Other forms of protest have included mud smearing and car vaulting - which first took hold in Germany and eventually inspired Mr. Pouliasis to try to throw himself over the S.U.V.

The Streetpanthers remind me a little of Earth on Empty's SUV summonses.  

The Daily News reports:

After months of community pressure, city Department of Transportation officials promised Brooklyn News the traffic-light timing would be adjusted over the weekend ... with an increased interval allowing pedestrians more time to cross the street.

"A little call from a reporter never hurt anything," said Principal Christina Fuentes who was notified by Brooklyn News late last week - not the DOT - that the light would be adjusted.

A third-grader was hit by a car and injured near the school last spring, prompting parents and others in the neighborhood to seek safety improvements -- along with Transportation Alternatives, which has consistently cited signal timing as an easy and effective means of reducing pedestrian injuries and deaths.

Transportation Alternatives has requested safety measures for other schools along dangerous Third and Fourth Aves., said TA official Brooke DuBose.

More than 30 pedestrians have been killed along the avenues since 1995 - including six children since 2004, according to TA figures.

Meanwhile, in Bushwick, a 7-year-old who was looking forward to starting first grade today was run down by two vehicles on Sunday as he crossed Bleecker Street with his mother and 8-year-old brother. Christian Acteopan died after being hit by a Mitsubishi Eclipse, which fled the scene, and a second vehicle traveling behind. The driver of the Eclipse was found and charged with leaving the scene of an accident; the second driver stayed at the scene and was not charged.

Acteopan's death comes less than a week after the unveiling of the heart-rending monument to three children killed by motorists on Third Avenue. The event included an announcement that DOT will be making long-awaited pedestrian safety improvements to intersections throughout Downtown Brooklyn.

Photo: New York Post

Yesterday was the first day of a car-free evening rush hour on Prospect Park's East Drive. Car-Free Park advocates and Transportation Alternatives members manned the barricades at the Park Circle entrance, reminiscing over more than a dozen years of activism and organizing. That's StreetFilms' Clarence Eckerson holding the "Thank you DOT" sign above. Below, T.A.'s Noah Budnick recommends Flatbush Avenue to the driver of a Lexus SUV.

Photos: Aaron Naparstek

We want you to go outside and count the number of SUVs on your block, as well as the number of regular cars, at any given moment. This is our experiment in “crowdsourcing,” where we employ you, the listener, in an act of journalism. We’re trying to find out just how much gas-guzzling SUV use there is throughout the New York area, with all the talk of environmental sustainability in the city. We’re giving you until next Thursday to do the counting, but please, just count the cars the one time. If you want to take photos, feel free to upload to Flickr and tag the photos blsuv. Post your results in the comment section below and we’ll analyze the results next week. Please post 1) your neighborhood, 2) your block (street and cross street) 3) the number of SUVs parked 4) the total number of cars parked

With new fuel economy standards under consideration in Congress, James Surowiecki ponders why Americans continue to buy gas guzzlers when polls show that the majority would like to see the government mandate big increases in fuel efficiency. What does all of this have to do with professional hockey players wearing helmets? This was in last week's New Yorker:

Americans may want to buy the biggest and most environmentally damaging vehicles available, but polls show that, given an option, some three-quarters of them vote for dramatic increases in fuel-economy standards-increases that may well force automakers to sell fewer (or at least smaller) S.U.V.s. We buy gas guzzlers but vote for gas sipping. This isn't because people are ignorant about how higher fuel-economy standards would affect them personally; polls that explicitly lay out the potential trade-offs involved still find support for tougher standards. And it isn't as if voters and car buyers belong to two different groups; one recent survey of pickup owners found that seventy per cent strongly favored tougher requirements. The curious fact is that many people buying three-ton Suburbans for that arduous two-mile trip to the supermarket also want Congress to pass laws making it harder to buy Suburbans at all.

What's happening here?

Back in the nineteen-seventies, an economist named Thomas Schelling, who later won the Nobel Prize, noticed something peculiar about the N.H.L. At the time, players were allowed, but not required, to wear helmets, and most players chose to go helmet-less, despite the risk of severe head trauma. But when they were asked in secret ballots most players also said that the league should require them to wear helmets. The reason for this conflict, Schelling explained, was that not wearing a helmet conferred a slight advantage on the ice; crucially, it gave the player better peripheral vision, and it also made him look fearless. The players wanted to have their heads protected, but as individuals they couldn't afford to jeopardize their effectiveness on the ice. Making helmets compulsory eliminated the dilemma: the players could protect their heads without suffering a competitive disadvantage. Without the rule, the players' individually rational decisions added up to a collectively irrational result. With the rule, the outcome was closer to what players really wanted.

The same phenomenon is, to some extent, at work in the fuel-economy debate. People believe that bigger and heavier cars are safer in a crash (forgetting that, often, bigger cars are also more likely to crash). And people like the fact that driving a higher-horsepower car makes you look better at the stoplight. So our desires as individuals to protect ourselves and to outclass our neighbors encourage us to buy bigger and bigger vehicles with more and more horsepower. And the market doesn't create counter-incentives that would push us in a responsible direction, since someone who drives a Hummer doesn't suffer the effects of pollution and global warming any more than someone driving a Prius does, and isn't charged more for the extra environmental damage.