I'd have been just as likely to push it to the floor when I fell asleep asleep as to let up on it, cruise control or not.

I admit though, I have no idea which one I did. All I know is I was driving, then I woke up in the woods with a seatbelt bruise and a cloud of smoke.

Pinned in the car? You mean like when the door latch failed in the Smart's pathetic 30mph side impact test?

Thanks for the vid. I enjoyed watching all those Smarts get destroyed...

But if the head of the dummy strikes the steering wheel in a 40mph frontal crash test, God help you if you're doing 55, or 70 which is the interstate speed limit in most of the US. I once fell asleep at the wheel in a Dodge Intrepid doing 70mph, ran off the road and hit a tree. I walked away with barely a scratch. I think the story would have ended differently in a Smart.

And the side impact test? 30mph, and their simulation of a truck or SUV is a joke. In the real world, the bumper height of those trucks is significantly higher than their test rig. And I am not impressed at all by the fact that I might live through a 30mph side impact in a Smart. My '71 Ford Maverick could protect me from that, and the only safety feature that thing is a brake pedal.

Rear impact test... "Simulating forces in a stationary vehicle rear-ended by another vehicle of the same weight at 20mph." What a joke! There is no other road legal car in the US in that weight class!

I'm from the southern US, therefore my weight is about the same as a Smart Fortwo. And 20mph is about the amount of force that my wheezing American body can muster up in a good solid kick. So why not just let me ram my size 12 steel toe boot up it's ass. That would be just about as useful as the rear-end crash test this thing scored so well on.

Preach it, brother... This is why I drive a 38 year old car, and I will continue to drive old cars until they're illegal, at which time I will become a criminal.

Computer controlled steering of any type is a scary idea. These innovations are good, and need to happen, but the number 1 design feature needs should be graceful failover to human control, and the ability for the driver to turn it off. I just don't see that happening on any kind of drive-by-wire system, or steering of the type described above.

If computers always did what they were told, and always knew better than me, I (like many of you) would have a completely different career.

Also, "front-wheel drive" is a bug, not a feature.

Oh, but I'm crying such a river for big media. Times are changing and the sooner we stop fighting it the better. Think of all the poor telegraph operators who lost their jobs when phones came along, or all the horse traders who went out of business 'cause of that damned Henry Ford and his tin lizzie. How COULD they have built the railroads knowing that the faithful old Pony Express would go bankrupt?

Oh right! Just like spam filters have stopped all email advertising, and AdBlock on Firefox has taken away all the banner ads on the web!

I see your point entirely! Advertising is good for everybody, just look what it did for UseNet!

Why couldn't we just pay the broadcasters? A buck or two a day from me to not hear any ads is more money than anybody's going to make off me through commercials anyway.

And I'd rather give Pandora a few dollars of my paycheck than listen to their ads.

Maybe this "entitlement generation" people keep talking about is just weary of being pestered by constant advertising shitting on every second of their lives. I feel like I'm walking downtown and every block there's a hobo with his hand out who won't take no for an answer. When I'm listening to music- actually listening, not just hearing it for background, it's because I'm trying to turn my mind off and enjoy a precious few minutes of free time. Between responsibilities at work and at home, being on call, being dad to a two year old, these minutes I have, say when I'm driving alone or wasting time in the garage with music playing, or just staying up for half an hour after everyone goes to bed... These moments are near sacred to me, and to be interrupted by a stupid commercial for shit I don't care about is infuriating.

Pandora was the answer for me, but if they start advertising I'm going back to "stealing" mp3s.

I'd buy and tag a shitbox for 120 days, then roll it over for the payoff.

That's why this plan is going to be a disaster, because people who don't need these vouchers will game the system for free money in droves, and buy up all the $1000 shitbox cars so they won't exist for people who actually need them.

I'm pretty sure you can get three in there if you cut 'em up.

The costs of all those things would not go up, had we a better transportation infrastructure like trains instead of diesel trucks.

Yes, but we don't. Let's wait we have some magic hobbits to plow those fields, or at least nuclear tractors.

Our economy deserves to fail, along with our current energy systems that will not let go and make way for better chioces.[...] We're staring at a serious wound here, now it is bleeding and the future can only be worse.[...] we need to flush it with alcohol first, endure some pain, and start dealing with it.

The change has to be gradual. You're asking for the destruction of our country. You want to bring change rapidly and violently, and I really don't think we'd recover from that. Mother Earth has waited a long time, she can wait a few more years while we take small (at first) steps in the right direction. And we are taking those steps. We have been for a long time, and now they're ramping up. See how that works? Like when you build a snowman! Calm down, take a couple of hits from your inhaler, it's gonna be okay. We don't have to throw ourselves into armageddon right now to fix this.

Oh yeah, that Police Interceptor Crown Vic that moves three tons of metal with eight beautiful cylinders of modular Ford power, with dual exhaust that surely smokes by now, is gonna be quite fuel efficient. Well done, well done...

$10/gal gas isn't going to just cause "SUV gluttons" to discard a few luxuries and trade that Escalate for a Smart.

It's going to drive up the cost of anything and everything at the grocery store that depends on fossil fuels to be produced or transported.

Mr. Escalade Guy will drive his Smart, and Mr. Minimum Wage Guy will drive his non-efficient car (that he now has to muster up $2500 instead of $1000 to buy) and go get some $3 celery sticks and a few $5 boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix to feed his family.

And he'll probably be doing it with food stamps, that oughtta git yer blood a-boilin'

That would be great if it would happen, but I'll bet these cars won't end up in your local Pull-A-Part. Straight to the crusher, more likely.

And even if I'm wrong, said motorhead will probably be paying a lot more at the junkyard, because the cars the junkyards normally pay $40 for will now be worth something. Not to mention that a "salvage" title will rip the bottom out of his project car's investment potential, thus removing the incentive to restore it.