About five months ago, people started walking in front of my car. During the winter holiday break, I finally prevailed upon my husband to buy a second car. The reasons why I felt we needed a second car are numerous (and, I think, compelling), but my husband's real issue was that we needed to change our gas consumption. This was new. For several years, his reply when I mentioned rising gas prices was "out one pocket, into the other." What he meant was that much of that money would keep coming back to us since a considerable percent of the funding for his program at a DC think tank came from oil companies. Except gas prices kept going higher and his funding from oil companies shrank. I think he also sees the world a little differently since he started biking to and from work a few years ago. Now, when for some reason the car isn't available, his initial response is not to rent a car; it's to see whether the destination is bike-able. But my commute to and from work is not bike-able. So we went shopping for a hybrid. While I had to compromise a bit -- one car was stylish but not very friendly to lending to an older relative and had limited backseat leg room while the other was rather staid but normal-feeling and relatively roomy, the real change almost immediately was the noise level. It's noticeable to me while driving since I'm almost always listening to music or a book on tape (okay, on my iPod). And it's certainly noticeable to those around me, but in the sense that they don't notice me. So people walk in front of my car. All the time. Now, here's the thing. I'm not the only hybrid out there, certainly not in my lefty DC suburb. This is Prius heaven, for pete's sake. So how come pedestrians haven't adjusted? And how do we teach people that listening for a car is not sufficient? I haven't figured that one out yet, but I'm worried. I won't let me teenager drive the hybrid, mostly because it's new but also because I don't want him to panic when someone steps in front of him. We all need to change our behavior, but clearly this is going to take people getting hit because they didn't notice a hybrid car pulling out next to them.