The Surprisingly Convincing Case Against Cars

Sarah
Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek, authors of Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile,
certainly think so. Goodyear and Gordon host the podcast The War on Cars and Naperstek
is a former co-host. They are winningly self-aware about the optics of a trio
of podcast hosts from Park Slope, Brooklyn, lecturing middle America on the
evils of personal car ownership. Accordingly, Life After Cars seeks to appeal to a wide swathe of readers, from
public transit nerds to the congenitally bike lane–averse. The authors marshal
a compelling blend of history, statistics, and anecdote in support of a quietly
radical argument: that mass car ownership, far from natural and inevitable, is
a historical blip that can and should be reversed. They are quick to make some
exceptions: emergency workers, residents of rural areas, and people with
mobility disabilities, among others, have good reasons for driving. Their lives
would be easier if everyone else got off the road.  

The
authors begin their chronicle of car culture’s ills in 1899, when a man named
Henry Bliss stepped into the path of an oncoming taxi, becoming the first
victim of a car crash in the United States. The advent of mass automobility in
the 1920s generated fierce backlash from citizens outraged by the number of
people being killed by cars. Just as cities were on the brink of regulating the
automotive menace, however, the auto industry stepped in. Industry allies
persuaded voters to reject proposed speed ordinances that would have
significantly reduced the chance of dying from being hit by a car. Local
governments reinforced the message that wayward pedestrians, not cars, bore the
blame for collisions. In the postwar period, the Eisenhower administration subsidized
the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, creating endless
suburban developments that took car ownership as a given. 

As
a result, the authors argue, we have accepted the massive costs of car
dependency rather than questioning a way of life centered around personal
vehicles. Some of these costs are obvious. Cars kill 40,000 people a
year on American roads, a toll so ingrained that other risks—the chance of
being a victim of gun violence or an opioid overdose—are assessed relative to
your chances of being killed in a car crash (one in 95 over a lifetime). Some are borne
by animals, not people. Advocates have successfully campaigned for wildlife
crossings, concrete corridors that help animals safely navigate deadly
highways. But there is no feel-good solution for the toxic chemicals that leach
from tires into bodies of water, poisoning fish and disrupting fragile
ecosystems. Equally insidious is the hollowing out of social space as people
retreat into cars that resemble armored vehicles, shuttling in isolation
between home, work, and soccer practice.