Smart car owners, be warned: don't park next to water.

The warning comes to us from Holland, where a strange new trend has popped up.  Wired explains, "Dutch pranksters have taken to throwing the tiny two-seaters into canals throughout Amsterdam, a trend police worry may spread to other European cities."  After all, at about 1,600 lbs, the Smart Fortwo weighs even less than the first-generation Volkswagen Beetles that pranksters were fond of picking up and moving in the 1960's.

Autoblog adds, "Since drivers of the diminutive little urban runabouts often choose to back into parking spots side-by-side in order to save on congestion, it's reportedly quite easy for drunken revelers to lift the front of the Fortwo and tip it tail-first right into a canal.  As you'd expect, any car that spends the night sleeping with the fishes at the bottom of a canal is very likely a total loss."

Police are trying to keep the fad quiet, for fear of copycats.  A Dutch Smart salesman told the U.K.'s Sun, "We're not supposed to talk about this because the police don't want the craze to spread but we've had quite a few drowned cars returned to us."  In the internet era, however, keeping the trend under the radar is not easy to do.

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