If you have ever been in traffic near a Smart car, you know how nervous they can make you. It’s almost like a bicycle or even a pedestrian. They zip along, passing cars when they can, acting like other cars. But you just can’t shake the feeling that you could roll over one like an empty can of Mountain Dew.

Well, you wouldn’t be far from it. The cars only weigh about 2,000 lbs., which means it’s not all that tough to tip one over. A recent spate of vandal attacks in San Francisco has grabbed headlines by doing just that. We reported here earlier about a handful of the Smart cars being tipped over, some on their sides, others on the hood or even just standing up on the back.

But it turns out that tipping Smart cars is not a new thing, and it didn’t start in the United States.

Back in 2009, a fad called “Smart tossing” took off in Amsterdam. Smart cars are small enough to park sideways in some areas where most cars would have to parallel park. So some Smart car drivers were backing into spaces along the canals in Amsterdam. Fun-loving youths out looking for trouble would them flip the cars directly into the canal.

There is a low guard rail that runs along the canals, but Smart cars are light enough to allow vandals to lift them and toss them into the water.

Back in 2009, “an employee of Smart Center Amsterdam confirmed the company has recently been confronted with it ‘a number of times.’”

The Dutch site reported that other small vehicles were also targets for tossing or tipping. Some of these are vehicles designed for handicapped persons.

“In an urban version of cow tipping, yobs apparently derive fun from tipping over these types of vehicles.”

A “yob” is a slang phrase for what we in the States might call a “hoodlum”. It is the word “boy” spelled backward.

Image via YouTube