Pros of golf carts and neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) replacing all private cars within a city:
- Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t a viable suburban commuter vehicle, meaning you’ll probably only take it to the nearest transit station
- Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t likely to kill people
- Excellent visibility, so less likely to run over children
- Much smaller and lighter, so building parking garages for park-and-rides would be a lot cheaper and less objectionable than with our current style of cars
- Electric
- Smaller batteries than jumbo EVs
- Compatible with dense, transit-oriented city development
- Could be installed with mandatory speed limiters
Cons:
- Less profit for GM and ExxonMobil
What about safety in crashes e.g. off a bridge?
Is driving a car off a bridge really a typical crash? Christ the concern trolling here is really scraping the barrel
It’s not, yet often enough (unfortunately one happened in our neighborhood last season), though I think the factors cited by Nouveau_Burnswick are enough to stop the most common ones unless under severe influence
The lower mass, speed, and center of gravity of these vehicles would mean even the lowest cost guard rails would be more than sufficient to stop anyone going off a bridge.