SUVs

Yesterday was the first day of a car-free evening rush hour on Prospect Park's East Drive. Car-Free Park advocates and Transportation Alternatives members manned the barricades at the Park Circle entrance, reminiscing over more than a dozen years of activism and organizing. That's StreetFilms' Clarence Eckerson holding the "Thank you DOT" sign above. Below, T.A.'s Noah Budnick recommends Flatbush Avenue to the driver of a Lexus SUV.

WNYC's Brian Lehrer wants to know how many SUV's there are on your block. You've got until next Thursday to do it. It's an experiment in "crowdsourcing." Submit your results here.

With new fuel economy standards under consideration in Congress, James Surowiecki ponders why Americans continue to buy gas guzzlers when polls show that the majority would like to see the government mandate big increases in fuel efficiency. What does all of this have to do with professional hockey players wearing helmets? This was in last week's New Yorker:

A rendering of a mural proposed for Butler St. and Third Ave., one block from the Brooklyn intersection where a 4-year-old boy was killed by the driver of a Hummer in February.

This is the third essay from Alex Marshall, who has written extensively on transportation issues as a journalist and author. He is a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, where he edits the bi-weekly Spotlight on the Region newsletter.

According to a new study out from the city's Department of Health, children in New York are seven times less likely than children nationwide to die as car passengers. That's the good news, likely the result of the fact that our kids spend a lot less time in cars than most American children.

Growing public awareness of the danger posed to children by the huge blind spots in SUVs has led to likely passage of what is known as the Kids and Cars act in this session of Congress. But it remains unclear whether the now-weakened bill will adequately address rear-visibility issues that have led to the deaths and injuries of hundreds of children in the past few years.

While reading the NY Times essay about the woman who drives back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge the other day, I was reminded of the Tiki Barber ads for the Cadillac Escalade. The spot that premiered during the Super Bowl is a moody, impressionistic montage that shows the former New York Giants running back driving solo through the streets and over the bridges of New York, talking about "seizing opportunities." The tagline is "Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit."

Toronto Mayor David Miller vowed last week to make Toronto "the leading environmental city in North America." The Toronto Star reports: