A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

I can and do occasionally drive, but I'm not a driver per se. This seems a little fucked to me. It's bad enough driving a small car in rush hour traffic, why would you want a large, unwieldy thing as well? And then to say that you will pay anything they want you to pay to drive is just asking to be abused at the pump. But that just shows you where our priorities are. They talk about the power you get, but how much does power matter in the city? It's like having a souped up computer to get the most out of Internet Explorer. People definitely, definitely do NOT want better fuel economy, or better fuel for that matter.
Neither does George Bush apparently. Two years ago, he killed the Supercar project (excellent article, but quite long and subscription is required), which was a challenge in the 90s to make a car that gets 80 miles to the gallon, which is about 35 km to the litre. Currently most cars give around 27 mpg. I wonder if the SUV drivers that are okay paying anything for their gas would be as willing if the price of gas were to increase with inflation rates, putting it at $3/gallon two years ago.
But we get what we deserve, I think. Like I said, power is great. I just asked someone why they would want lots of power in the city. "To get to the on ramp faster." Not that they can go as fast as they want to anyway. Why, then, get to the maximum speed three seconds faster? What's the big deal, really?
And they are almost all SPV's, or single passenger vehicles. Sure you see them loading the family up into the car for the family weekend, or soccer practice, but that's not what I see every single day. Every single day I see thousands and thousands of cars with exactly that number of people inside them. No one wants to drive with anyone else, it seems, not in Montreal.
I know I should learn more about cars to really understand the plight of the driver who wants more, but from this point of view, these drivers deserve to pay $3/gallon for gas.