Smokers are obnoxious because they obscure vision, and seemingly can keep up with me, at least, even when I have Quick. I've also found them to be pretty tough in a fight, too - they take a fair amount of rounds and pain to put down in melee.
My last encounter with them was while driving around in town joyriding in a car - it was kinda spooky ramming them, since I wouldn't know if there was a wreck behind them or not. Eventually I wrecked the car by running a hulk over and killing it - breaking the thing's engine in the process. About two tiles from a smoker zambie's cloud radius, incidentally, but that's not too relevant - none of them gave me much trouble, as I'd thankfully made a filter mask before taking my little trip.
Also slightly annoying is that, IIRC, they don't show up on the directional MONSTERS YOU CAN SEE thing, since, of course, they're hidden by smoke. STEALTH ZOMBIES.
Question: Do electric vehicle motors model that thing where they don't really need to 'accelerate' like a gas motor does? I recall it being such when I made one - it was a hybrid scratch-built RV, and essentially wouldn't move if I set it to anything lower than 30 mph, at which point it would IMMEDIATELY jump to 20 mph - kinda problematic for maneuvering in town - but I'm not sure if that's a legit thing, or if the game was just derping because my car was a fat PoS and my engines couldn't handle attempts to move it with anything less than "OH GOD WE'RE GONNA DIE" on the gas pedal. Hyperbole.