Why don’t we drive around in low-speed city traffic in something like golf carts? Bikes are great, but there are times you need to move heavy bulky items around, and I applaud people who bike around with small children but have not found that practical on a daily basis. Golf carts would save tons of space, and would eliminate a lot of noise and pollution if they were electric.

I can think of two reasons why we don’t use them. First is that we want highway vehicles so we can get on the highway and leave the city at at moment’s notice. But if we live, work, shop, and study in our cities, we only need to leave occasionally. In that case, it makes sense to rent that larger vehicle just when we need it. We would also be more likely to pick buses, trains, and planes for those weekend trips when it makes sense, because we wouldn’t have sunk all that money in private cars and feel like we need to make use of them. (I’ve heard this is 100% illogical and also 100% normal human behavior.)

The second reason is the perception that we need big, heavy, fast vehicles to protect us from other big, heavy, fast vehicles. Well, mutually assured destruction is no way to run our cities and lives. If everybody switches to golf carts, we won’t have this problem, but nobody wants to be the first and end up a stain on the pavement. And most cities won’t dedicate streets and lanes to smaller vehicles because the big vehicles need so much space for driving and especially parking. And no, I don’t think golf carts really belong in our protected bike lanes, where we are lucky enough to have those, because they are still big, heavy, and fast enough to run over bikes, I think.

Just reminder, though, that we still need to get off our butts and walk most places, most of the time. Riding around on quiet, clean, safe motorized vehicles isn’t going to help with things like diabetes or obesity.