[henk4]

Originally posted by Egg Nog

I agree with you regarding the safety issue. I could easily go into a long rant about safety and huge "safe" cars posing a huge threat to the people in smaller cars who can't afford them, but I think I'll stop myself for the sake of keeping this on topic

The safety issue is exactly what makes cars heavy these days. It a selfpropelled mechanism, whereby the more safety gadgets in the car,the heavier it becomes, and the more safety gadgets it will need. (and scoring 5 stars in the crash test is good marketing value). At the end of the day it's the people who cause the accidents, and because in modern quasi armoured cars they feel unvulnerable, the risk of being hit is increasing. Therefore if you want to participate in modern traffic you might as well protect yourself because although you might be driving this nippy Elise, which will allow you to use the road at your discretion and with a minimal use of energy (imagine all the kilo's that don't have to be moved), you stand no chance against a SUV driven by a moron that is probably sitting too high to even notice you.