Personally, I think car sharing is a really cool idea. Especially on college campuses where parking is hard to find, congestion is a fact of life, and alcohol often flows too freely. You'll also find a bunch of elitist douchebags—and it seems like some of them don't like the idea of car sharing. Probably because "eww, poor people."
Frankly, I'm actually old enough that car sharing wasn't a thing in Austin while I was at the University of Texas, but I wish it had been. True, in some ways, I was a bit of an elitist douchebag myself—a Polo shirt collar popping, Tory Burch sunglasses and boat shoes wearing, BMW 3-series driver with an apartment in West Campus. And a glorious parking spot only two blocks from campus.
I'm sure there were times I was an asshole, but at least I never did anything even remotely close to this:
See, the thing about these smart cars used for car sharing is that they're small. Very small. And this makes them rather easy to tip over. In fact, they're so easy to flip over, it's probably not hard to do even after you've done three keg stands, downed multiple tequila shots, and chased with some half warm hard cider because dammit that's all your lame roommate had in the fridge.
Now that I'm quite a bit more reasonable, rational, and a lot more populist (even going so far as to live in and advocate for a socialist state), I think more urban areas need to add car sharing. This is the only way you would get me to drive in Tokyo. Increasingly, it is the only way you would get me to drive in downtown Austin or anywhere near the UT 40 acres.
Long live car sharing. Down with douchebags. Also, as many vagina owners can tell you—douching isn't really all that good for those parts anyway.
Image via dsmpowered/Twitter.