Chucking "Green" Smart Cars into Canals



(Amsterdam, Netherlands) Dutch media indicate that environmentally-friendly "smart" cars, tiny two-seaters, are being picked up by roving bands of "pranksters" and tossed into the city's canals.

According to the Dutch-language Telegraff, five of the smart cars have been thrown in the water in the past two weeks. Authorities fear the practice will spread to other locations.

Amsterdam police speculate that the youths perpetrating this vandalism may be doing it as a bet, and evidence from one of the cases indicates that a lone vandal is capable of flipping the car.

The police indicated that evidence from another scene clearly shows 4 vandals lifting the car clear off its wheels, carrying it 20 feet, and dumping it into a lake. Because of this, the city does not believe that installing higher guard rails will deter all "Smart Smijten."

While American SMART car owners don't have to contend with the deep canals that urban-drellers in Europe do, it is still possible that Smart Tipping could spread in a more literal sense. Since none of the vandals have been caught, it's not clear if the vandals are targeting that specific marque for its ease of vandalism, or for their disdain for the ideal behind the machine.

Interestingly, the car-chuckers are called pranksters whereas if they set the cars on fire, they would be called unemployed, disenfranchised youths protesting their poverty-stricken lives.

The Smart Smijten practice has been compared to the 1960s stunts of picking up and moving Volkwagen Beetles but there's a difference. As I recall, the Volkwagens floated. Smart cars don't and "any car that spends the night sleeping with the fishes at the bottom of a canal is very likely a total loss."

Nevertheless, I suggest that the problem of "pranksters" taking Smart cars would be prevented by providing the light-weight vehicles with beefy bicycle chains and locking them to fence posts or street lights. You're welcome.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.