While having two cars is an unfortunate necessity in suburban life for many families, my wife and I plan to try hard to limit ourselves to one, pending my new commute (new office location). We also would like to keep our children out of a car as much as possible, simply because there are so many morons on the road. This fact was highlighted yesterday when, for the second time in my life, I saw a dead guy in the middle of the highway, bloody and ready to be zipped up in a bag as four lanes of traffic were closed off further down:

A second person has died after an accident this morning on Route 128 South in Burlington, and a Bedford man has been charged with motor vehicle homicide for allegedly causing the crash, state police said in a statement.

Police said Carlo was driving a 2008 Ford pickup truck southbound when he failed to stay within his lane and swerved into the lane to his right, hitting a 1996 Ford Explorer driven by Jose M. Martinez, 29, of Woburn. The contact caused the Explorer to lose control, spin out to its left, and cross the highway, where it crashed into a 2008 Dodge Durango occupied by five men. Both the Explorer and Durango rolled over.

Key fact: a pickup truck and two SUVs were involved. I drive this highway every day along with thousands of other commuters, and there are far too many people driving their pickup trucks and truck-based vehicles as if they're in the Formula One Grand Prix. People love to be high up and comfortable on top of having ridiculous convenience features in their car, but they forget that the car can't save them from themselves, and continue to drive like idiots.

This is where freedom and libertarian values fail us. When there's not an obvious restriction on "life, liberty, and the pursuit", but the effects of idiotic decisions like allowing anyone who has enough money to buy a huge pickup truck avoid us until after the fact, cognitive dissonance sets in. We try to think of any reason this could be avoided instead of talking about what caused it: allowing anyone to take a 5-minute test for a lifelong license to drive nearly any vehicle they choose, even if in many cases there's no commercial need for these huge trucks on the part of those purchasing the trucks.

You can't live your life in fear, but you can drive slowly and in the right lane where these moron drivers prefer not to be driving.

Honda has been marketing fuel-efficient vehicles in the United States for decades, starting, ironically, with the T360 pickup truck. Their latest hybrid vehicle, a trend started by Toyota & Honda in the late 1990s to push people into compact cars with new technology, is the redesigned Insight, which looks essentially like a Toyota Prius twin.

Honda & Toyota have become “push” manufacturers, meaning they feel they can define the market for the consumer as a result of their market influence. Honda’s most recent Accord model has edged into full-size car status, as Honda grows the Civic to make room for the Fit. Between the Fit and Civic is a car that apparently not only fails Honda’s own strict standards for interior quality, but also drivability.

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

"But let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish.”

This is Honda’s way of telling us that they can sacrifice the things that allowed them to progress from making glorified Kei cars to beautiful luxury cars which kept the tradition of fuel efficiency in a tight package. What you get with the Insight seems to be a hipster lifestyle choice, complete with an Un-Green technology in the form of an as-yet unrecyclable lithium ion battery which would kill you if you opened it up and let it leak onto your skin. Thanks, Honda, but no thanks: think about the economy and the driver next time instead of following the advice of your marketing department.