San Francisco went through a bizarre, localized crime wave in the early 2010s where gangs of vandals started physically lifting and tipping over parked Smart cars in the middle of the night.

A closer look

San Francisco went through a bizarre, localized crime wave in the early 2010s where gangs of vandals started physically lifting and tipping over parked Smart cars in the middle of the night. Because the aggressively tiny, fuel-efficient vehicles weigh roughly the same as a moderately obese dairy cow, it only took three or four bored pedestrians to flip them onto their roofs or sides like helpless mechanical turtles. It is an incredibly specific and humiliating type of vandalism that entirely negates the smug environmental satisfaction of buying a micro-car in a crowded urban environment. You think you are saving the planet and cheating the parking wardens, only to wake up and find your premium German golf cart resting upside down in a pedestrian crosswalk. This is exactly why Americans insist on buying massive pickup trucks they never actually use for hauling, simply because they are too heavy for drunken hipsters to roll over