...they just aren’t doing it the way the busybody nanny staters like:

DETROIT, May 25 — With gas prices well over $3 a gallon nationwide, many drivers are lining up to buy small cars.

But hundreds of thousands of consumers aren’t giving up anything to downsize. Instead, they are simply adding pint-size transportation to their driveways, parked alongside their S.U.V. or pickup.

In households that own a small car, the family fleet is close to an average of three vehicles, according to CNW Marketing Research, which tracks industry trends (the national average is just over two cars per household; America was a one-car-per-family nation a generation ago).

These growing fleets suggest an approach to conservation that is more addition than subtraction.

So what does this tell us?  Well, it tells me that Americans are remarkably resilient financially.  We are told by the media all the time about how terrible our economy is and how Americans are just barely struggling to eke out a living.  Then we learn that most Americans are dealing with the economic hardships of high gas prices by...buying another car?

That’s indicative of a nation full of confident, financially comfortable citizens.

And I really don’t see this approach to conservation as being all that troubling.  I know a lot of people around here who have bought little motor scooters or motorcycles to commute back and forth to work, etc. when gas prices get high.  Once prices get more affordable again, they’re back in their SUV’s and pickups.  Of course, that creates something of a vicious cycle whereby prices go high and demand shrinks only to see prices fall until demand picks up again thus starting the cycle over again, but that’s the way free markets work.

Americans clearly like their pickups and SUV’s.  No amount of campaigning from nanny stater’s is going to change that, so we may as well accept it and figure out how to solve our energy prices without forcing Americans to drive cars they don’t like.