1. Driving is Dangerous. Like, really dangerous. Accidental deaths are the most likely end for young people in this country, and the most popular one is car accidents. Even if you’re not drinking or speeding, the possibility that someone else on the road is looms as the most likely way for you to die violently for no reason. Air pollution from automobile exhaust is also largely responsible for thousands of deaths from respiratory diseases like bronchitis and asthma every year. It’s not just humans, of course; millions of animals are destroyed each year as well. These points alone are sufficient to dissuade me from driving.
2. Driving Makes You Fat. It’s no coincidence that four of the nation’s top ten fattest cities are in Texas, and that the rest are all relatively highway-loving cities. Texans (outside of Austin, the only non-competitive city for this category) don’t walk or ride bikes, and for many of them it seems impractical. But nothing is more impractical than being obese, a national problem that contributes to the leading causes of death (like heart disease) for those of us over 35. If it’s not bad enough that failing to get exercise can kill you, it also can make you unhappy. It’s ironic to consider the association between cars and sex appeal in our society. What’s less sexy: a person who has (or likes) to walk to work, or someone who couldn’t if they tried?
3. Cars Are Destroying the Planet. We should all be familiar with the impact of carbon emissions on the earth’s atmosphere by now- it’s not good. Road construction destroys broad swaths of nature, and runoff from roads pollutes our increasingly scarce water supplies. Almost everything involved in the process of petrochemicals is deadly to life. I am troubled by some of my cohort’s perception that driving keeps life clean and orderly; I would much rather arrive to work with sweat stains than leave an impermeable trail of toxicity in my wake.
4. Driving Cars Drives You Crazy. Surprise: spending two or three hours a day (or more) behind the wheel increases your anxiety levels and makes you angry. But it’s not just rush hour; commuting, maintaining your vehicle, and just being in the kind of places fit for cars (busy freeways, enormous parking lots, crowded malls) is a stress-inducing way of life. It’s not just a risk factor for your health- it’s a factor that makes life less valuable. It’s just not worth it.
5. Driving Is Not Affordable. Many people respond to criticism of their car-crazy lifestyles by responding that they can’t afford the alternatives: working closer to home (or living closer to work), using alternative transit (like buses, taxis or trains), or shopping at slightly more expensive local businesses. But the costs of owning and operating a car can be staggering: Most Americans spend more on their cars than housing and food combined, over $600/month. Considering the fact that many car-driving Americans can’t even afford health care, this should be a telling analysis. The alternatives pale in comparison.
6. The Oil Industry is Evil. Car companies are far from innocent organizations, but their actions are mere mischief compared to the wholesale criminality of Big Oil. From the Niger Delta to the Middle East, from K Street to Main Street, petrochemical giants lie, cheat, steal, massacre, and lay waste to entire ecosystems. These are the organizations that put our President into office, they are the ones profiteering from the war in Iraq, and their predatory practices impoverish the Third World and the Third Ward alike. You can do an incredible thing to fight them: stop buying their products.
7. Communities Are Made of People, not Parking Lots. One of the most devastating effects of a car-driven lifestyle is isolation. Speed, metal, glass, and rage drive apart families, neighborhoods, races and classes. Without cars, we can and must engage the other members of our society, whether or not it seems convenient at the time. Walking builds relationships, exposes us to the details of our surroundings, helps us think about the place we live in, and even helps local nightlife. Think about the last time you visited a fun destination: a beautiful city center, a park, even a mall. The fun part was probably not the driving, but the walking, people-watching, and perception that took place on foot.
8. Cars Deaden and Destroy Cities. Although our concept of the modern city is inseparable from automobiles, the elevation of auto transit to a universal way of life has put many of our once-proud urban areas into a permanent vegetative state. Communities that once boasted first-rate cultural amenities, downtown living, and real street life are now empty and silent, while outlying suburbs sprawl out absurd distances without actually containing anything interesting. Sprawl is a sad fate for a city, but it may be even sadder for the surrounding countryside. Not everyone is a committed urbanite, but those of us who appreciate the natural beauty of our environment should be even more suspicious of freeway powered shopping corridors and labyrinthine subdivisions. There is a joke in the development community that subdivisions are named after whatever natural feature they destroyed: Cypress Falls, Clear Lake, Westlake. When we drive, we engage in a process that saps our cities of vitality and strains the health of all our natural environments.
9. Local Businesses Need Local Customers. Most of us have felt pride at the success of a local business venture, especially one we feel expresses our values and identity. But that uniqueness competes directly with the mass-produced facelessness that occupies freeway exits and megamalls. Quantity can only defeat quality when people never get a chance to take a closer look, and when they spend so much of their time far from home that nothing seems familiar- except the images they remember from mass marketing campaigns. If you value the kind of cafes, movie theatres, clothing shops and grocery stores your neighbors have to offer, take the time to go there- I bet you can walk.
10. If You Want To Walk Tall, You Have to Walk. To many cultural commentators, the automobile is the embodiment of the American spirit of independence. It is a contraption we invented to traverse the vast spaces of this country, and to some of us it is an expression of our freedom. But there comes a time to recognize the limits of this metaphor and the unfortunate perversion of its premise. Car ads remind us constantly of all the brave unknowns we could explore with an SUV, but few of us have missed the irony of these spots: that most Hummer drivers take them no further from the beaten path than the nearest airport. The reality of cars is the opposite. Many people recognize the stultifying pain of spending all day in their cars, but blame their trapped feelings on broader circumstances. It’s true that the community you live in, where your kids go to school, and your social environment have a big impact on how easy it is to switch to alternative transit. But the car itself is what is keeping you from doing what you want. It’s not impossible to have a life that moves in multiple directions, not just forward at 60mph, trapped by the narrow band of concrete separating you from your community and the world beyond. Next time you decide not to go somewhere because of traffic, not to visit a restaurant because of parking, not to visit relatives because of gas, or not to have a conversation because you can’t hear your loved ones from the back seat, ask yourself whether your car is holding you back. It’s up to you to break free.
onder:
