Thinking outside the box

The countless hours that drivers waste stuck in traffic when they could engage in more productive activities like watching television is one of my chief concerns. Often times I lie in bed at night, unable to sleep due to the crippling traffic problems that plague our cities. Why doesn't someone invent a smaller, two-wheeled vehicle that theoretically existing drivers could use to get to their jobs that also exist? This is the question that haunts me day and night.

And once again it seems our friends and beneficiaries at General Motors have their respective fingers on my neck, and thus on the pulse of the American motorist. This week they unveiled a new vehicle sure to revolutionize the way one gets around in a city. Dubbed the Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility project or PUMA, it seems destined to fill the hole in U.S. transportation industry left by the inexplicable failure of the Segway, which is a partner in this enterprise.

It figures that it would take teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for a Detroit automaker to finally get its act together and embrace the gyroscope technology that has long eluded them, despite public clamoring. Everything I've read on PUMAs is exciting and innovative, sure to cut to the quick of hip city-dwellers who don't get theirs on the very first day they become available. A veritable iPhone of the road.

So GM, to you I extend a salute and hearty handshake. May you be successful beyond your wildest dreams in this new endeavor. I don't see how it could possibly go wrong. There simply aren't any other two-wheeled options available for urban commuters who want to travel just outside walking distance. And no, I'm not forgetting the rickshaw, I just think that the time of a man pulling another man on a cart has come and gone.