If you read the Car-Free forum these arguments come up every day. Of course a car is more manageable for your lifestyle. And by the way there was an exact "pregnant wife" post in the Car-Free: she actually had no problem going to the hospital right up until pregnancy by bike [of course the plural of "anecdote" is not "data"]. Again you are pointing out a _utilitarian_ use of a vehicle. I am strictly talking about kids taking cars to the track as a hobby.

I am not trying to force car-free on anyone. For my foreseeable lifestyle (European-style grocery-shop-multiple-times-per-week, no kids and certainly no wife, semi-urban environment) I have no problem car-free but I am not so dull to realize even moving 15 miles further away from Philadelphia would put me in a landscape where car is king.

Overall my simple argument is that most of America is "monkey see, monkey do." If homeboy sees another kid tuning his combustion engine car and racing it for a hobby (not professionally, not with any significant lifestyle-sustaining monetary gain), this is only fueling the market for fast, non-environmental cars in a cloudy climate that desperately needs to move away from car culture when cars are not needed.