16% of personal vehicles in the Netherlands are currently diesel cars. About 20% of all vehicles sold here last year were diesel vehicles. So at least here, it's very common for people to drive a diesel car. They come in all sizes.
Modern Ultra-Low Sulphur Diesel (ULSD) is the standard road diesel in both the EU and USA since many years now. And with modern common-rail engines with electronically controlled direct injection, you no longer get the big black clouds of soot when you push down the pedal either (unless you're one of those "rolling coal" morons that mod their trucks to intentionally produce more of it). And further, modern diesel cars tend to have particulate filters and urea catalysts etc.
So all in all, a modern diesel is pretty clean. Not as good as a modern gasoline car, but still reasonably ok and massively better than old diesels.
Many of the car-buying Americans have the idea of "diesel car" from old Mercedes 240Ds and such, which had the acceleration of a dead snail against a headwind on a good day.
There is nothing inherently requiring diesel cars to be slow.
