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imomusAl Quaeda is a paper tiger. Al Quaeda is a minor threat. There is an organisation -- a way of organising society -- that kills more than a million people per year worldwide. Let's call it Al Careda: motorised private transport. The car.
Let's not even look at the way the car contributes to global warming and pollution or causes wars in parts of the world with oil, or how the car turns vital, lively public space into dead, armoured, private space, or how cars make their drivers aggressive, fat or unfit. Let's just look at how many people cars physically kill and maim by hitting them, crushing them, mangling them, and throwing them to the ground.
According to the BBC, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, 1.2 million people are killed in road traffic accidents around the world each year. Another 50 million people are injured. Traffic accidents, not terrorism, are the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 35. And things are getting worse. People are buying more and more cars. On current trends, by 2020 road traffic accidents will have risen by 60%, outstripping stroke and HIV as the main causes of preventable death.
Politicians are not decrying the car as 'evil'. There is little talk of danger, of 'Al Careda' or 'Carmageddon', and even less of measures to be taken. Politicians have not declared a 'War on Carism'. They have not invaded Munich or Detroit, or sent occupying armies to Nagoya. The WHO report contains a few mealy-mouthed and vague comments from Bush and Blair. But no politicians are curbing our civil liberties to fight Al Careda, despite the fact that you and I are thousands of times more likely to die prematurely due to cars than due to Islamist terrorism.
In fact, the spread of the car is an example of the spinelessness of politicians and the toothlessness of democracy. A machine is invented and introduced without much foresight or political debate. It seems like a good idea at the time. It seems to be about technology, not politics, health or morality. Some states require men with red flags to walk in front of cars when they're first introduced, but by and large everyone is excited about the machine. No elections are fought on the question 'Whether or not we should have cars'. The 'democratic' angle on cars is not how to get rid of them, but how to make them affordable to the common man. Carless places -- Venice, the island of Sark, Alicudi -- are that way for topographic rather than moral reasons. Very few voices against carism are raised. Even now, when the true cost of cars to the planet can to be calculated, radical political solutions don't seem to be proposed, because they don't seem to be possible.
'The WHO-World Bank joint report sets out specific measures aimed at reducing deaths from road traffic accidents,' the BBC reports. 'These include providing affordable public transportation and safe crossings and paths for pedestrians. It also suggests that communities should be planned so that residents do not have to travel far to go to work, school or local shops. In addition, it says more could be done to separate different road users, like lorry drivers or those doing the school run.'
These are pathetically small and unimaginative solutions. In a democracy, attitude matters. We can start the long march towards a car-free world by changing the prevalent attitude to cars. We should create an aura of unacceptability around cars, a car taboo. We need to draw people's attention to the toxicity of cars. We need to counter all the careless car-love, all the slick advertising, and make the idea that cars are toxic thinkable and sayable.
I'll say it right here. Cars are ugly. I hate them. I hate the look of them, the politics of them, the noise they make, their smell. I'd be delighted to see more cars in cities getting scratched, defaced, daubed with slogans, burned out. Cars deserve public vituperation much more than terrorists do. Cars are an idea that has had its time. They're past their sell-by date and they're damaging the world and the things I love.
A car cannot be cool. The world would be better off without cars. I will vote for people who are anti-car (unless they're Nader and my vote just helps an oil president). I want politicians to be proposing car-free cities, car-free days and car-free weeks, and eventually car-free nations and car-free years. I want to see Barcelona ban the carrida the way it has just banned the corrida. I want car bans to expand at the rate that smoking bans are currently expanding. I want to hear rhetoric about cars that matches rhetoric about terrorists. I want to see a big statue of Henry Ford toppled, to massive applause from freedom-loving people all over the world.
I want to hear about the complete separation of cars from cities. I want to see proposals from architecture students to put cars in underground tubes and tunnels. I want car drivers to be troglodytes. I want to see car drivers paying the actual price their cars cost the world, not just the cost of the metal and the gas. I want computers to take over all the functions of driving, not just parking, and I want cars to evolve into public spaces. For instance, when cars are snarled in tailbacks, I want little doors between their noses and tails to open automatically, turning the rows of private cars into a trainlike public space with a corridor. I want to see people getting up from their car seats, stretching, and walking up and down that corridor, looking at other people, buying a cup of green tea from a trolley.
I want to hear some acknowledgement from politicians that it's the things that everyone does, the things that pass for normal, that are the truly toxic and 'evil' things in the world today, not a few marginal guerilla movements or rogue states. If you want to see an 'evil' person, a person likely to wreak havoc and cause death, take a photo of yourself as you walk towards your car.
I dedicate this blog entry to Mary Hansen of Stereolab, a victim of terrorism.
Let's not even look at the way the car contributes to global warming and pollution or causes wars in parts of the world with oil, or how the car turns vital, lively public space into dead, armoured, private space, or how cars make their drivers aggressive, fat or unfit. Let's just look at how many people cars physically kill and maim by hitting them, crushing them, mangling them, and throwing them to the ground.
According to the BBC, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, 1.2 million people are killed in road traffic accidents around the world each year. Another 50 million people are injured. Traffic accidents, not terrorism, are the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 35. And things are getting worse. People are buying more and more cars. On current trends, by 2020 road traffic accidents will have risen by 60%, outstripping stroke and HIV as the main causes of preventable death.
Politicians are not decrying the car as 'evil'. There is little talk of danger, of 'Al Careda' or 'Carmageddon', and even less of measures to be taken. Politicians have not declared a 'War on Carism'. They have not invaded Munich or Detroit, or sent occupying armies to Nagoya. The WHO report contains a few mealy-mouthed and vague comments from Bush and Blair. But no politicians are curbing our civil liberties to fight Al Careda, despite the fact that you and I are thousands of times more likely to die prematurely due to cars than due to Islamist terrorism.
In fact, the spread of the car is an example of the spinelessness of politicians and the toothlessness of democracy. A machine is invented and introduced without much foresight or political debate. It seems like a good idea at the time. It seems to be about technology, not politics, health or morality. Some states require men with red flags to walk in front of cars when they're first introduced, but by and large everyone is excited about the machine. No elections are fought on the question 'Whether or not we should have cars'. The 'democratic' angle on cars is not how to get rid of them, but how to make them affordable to the common man. Carless places -- Venice, the island of Sark, Alicudi -- are that way for topographic rather than moral reasons. Very few voices against carism are raised. Even now, when the true cost of cars to the planet can to be calculated, radical political solutions don't seem to be proposed, because they don't seem to be possible.
'The WHO-World Bank joint report sets out specific measures aimed at reducing deaths from road traffic accidents,' the BBC reports. 'These include providing affordable public transportation and safe crossings and paths for pedestrians. It also suggests that communities should be planned so that residents do not have to travel far to go to work, school or local shops. In addition, it says more could be done to separate different road users, like lorry drivers or those doing the school run.'
These are pathetically small and unimaginative solutions. In a democracy, attitude matters. We can start the long march towards a car-free world by changing the prevalent attitude to cars. We should create an aura of unacceptability around cars, a car taboo. We need to draw people's attention to the toxicity of cars. We need to counter all the careless car-love, all the slick advertising, and make the idea that cars are toxic thinkable and sayable.
I'll say it right here. Cars are ugly. I hate them. I hate the look of them, the politics of them, the noise they make, their smell. I'd be delighted to see more cars in cities getting scratched, defaced, daubed with slogans, burned out. Cars deserve public vituperation much more than terrorists do. Cars are an idea that has had its time. They're past their sell-by date and they're damaging the world and the things I love.
A car cannot be cool. The world would be better off without cars. I will vote for people who are anti-car (unless they're Nader and my vote just helps an oil president). I want politicians to be proposing car-free cities, car-free days and car-free weeks, and eventually car-free nations and car-free years. I want to see Barcelona ban the carrida the way it has just banned the corrida. I want car bans to expand at the rate that smoking bans are currently expanding. I want to hear rhetoric about cars that matches rhetoric about terrorists. I want to see a big statue of Henry Ford toppled, to massive applause from freedom-loving people all over the world.
I want to hear about the complete separation of cars from cities. I want to see proposals from architecture students to put cars in underground tubes and tunnels. I want car drivers to be troglodytes. I want to see car drivers paying the actual price their cars cost the world, not just the cost of the metal and the gas. I want computers to take over all the functions of driving, not just parking, and I want cars to evolve into public spaces. For instance, when cars are snarled in tailbacks, I want little doors between their noses and tails to open automatically, turning the rows of private cars into a trainlike public space with a corridor. I want to see people getting up from their car seats, stretching, and walking up and down that corridor, looking at other people, buying a cup of green tea from a trolley.
I want to hear some acknowledgement from politicians that it's the things that everyone does, the things that pass for normal, that are the truly toxic and 'evil' things in the world today, not a few marginal guerilla movements or rogue states. If you want to see an 'evil' person, a person likely to wreak havoc and cause death, take a photo of yourself as you walk towards your car.
I dedicate this blog entry to Mary Hansen of Stereolab, a victim of terrorism.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 03:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 04:10 am (UTC)humans! what a stupid useless lot!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 04:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 05:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 05:36 am (UTC)(Shame about Mary. Didn't Nico die like that?)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 05:56 am (UTC)If public transportation in our city wasn't so horrible, I would have stuck with that.
I think the 2 hour wait times just finally got to me.
Although, I don't feel too horrible though with my terribly efficient, subcompact CRX
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 06:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 06:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 07:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 07:27 am (UTC)http://www.urban75.com/Punch/clarkson.html
'Step forward that smug, tight-trousered, lardy-arsed oaf, Jeremy Clarkson and take a well deserved slap. When this blubbery bore isn't droning about cars in that wanky voice of his, he's busy making a total fuckwit of himself with statements like, "if others want to save the planet, that's up to them. I'm too busy going to parties."
Caricide
Date: 2004-04-07 07:28 am (UTC)In the meantime, there are several less ideal if more realistic steps we can take: smaller, more efficient cars; better public transportation; more bikes and scooters (like mine!); better city planning; higher gas prices and car taxes; more walking! And outlawing the ubiquitous SUVs, supersized vans, and Hummers, too.
(My father was crippled in a car accident, so I've always hated them, but I admit I enjoy riding in or driving them when I can, so I'm the first to admit I'm a hypocrite.)
To my fellow poster: I think Nico died when she had a heart attack while riding a bike in the Canary Islands, if I remember correctly--but maybe there was a car involved, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 07:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 07:46 am (UTC)now i've moved to portland, or and buses go nowehere. it's abysmal! after being let go from my job in the downtown highrise i had to take a job in the suburbs and before you could say "global warming!" i was the wary owner of a vw golf. it's definitely an evil necessity.
but i do dream of the day i can throw off the shackles of car payment/gas consumption/road rage. i would love it if everyone else followed suit.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 07:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 08:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 08:56 am (UTC)hating cars is a good thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 09:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 09:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 09:52 am (UTC)That's why I'm scared to ride a bike in San Francisco- the drivers really don't give a shit about pedestrians- it's even hard to cross a street at a controlled crossing. I did enjoy having a car here when I had it, but now I have to rely on the bloody public transport that is the worst I have ever known (and I've lived here over 7 years, also been in Seattle, LA, NY, Chicago, London, Vienna and a few other major cities). Cars are practical in places that have no public transport, and not every town and city in the world can afford to have a developed public transport system. Cars will always be needed, unless everyone moves to the major cities, which will result in overcrowding, lack of housing, etc...and you can experience all these wonderful things in San Francisco!!! I think though that if there is a public transport system available in a major city that gets someone where they need to go(the most important factor seems to be getting to work), then people should use it. I hate people who could take public transport, but choose to use their car instead. But economic factors also have to be considered per individual. The public transport company's should also be responsible and professional, and not dick people around- like SF MUNI for example. I ride SF MUNI every day and I hate them...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 09:52 am (UTC)if it does come to that point where driving is inevitable, i do highly recommend the golf. though i also have sudden panic attacks from time to time when i realize i have to drive somewhere, my golf really helps alleviate the fears.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 09:57 am (UTC)I long for the sparkling, savvy, sagacious philosophy of Momus, and tire of the cantankerous, ill-considered, madcap ejaculations of crotchety old Moanmus.
But it’s all in fun. I love you still.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 10:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 10:08 am (UTC)there is no one cause behind Al Qaeda, either. there is the fact that about 50,000 years ago people started circulating counterfactuals as a basic for intellectual development, and that somewhere closer to 10,000 years ago the maintenance and development of those mythic structures became ordered in a guild structure; that an increased focus onon literate transmission of those structures about 2,000 years ago led to increased specialization among specific mythic forms, leading to dilineation between the cultural expressions of those forms along roughly geopolitical boundaries...
I mean, a thesis could be written on the ultimate causes of the politico-religious aspect of Middle Eastern terrorism alone, and that's leaving aside complicating factors like the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish state by wealthy foreign landowners in the middle of a relatively poverty-stricken and isolationist area of the world, patriarchal governing of "lesser" peoples by ultimately fundamentalist religious administrations in the West, and increased demand for oil worldwide (which of course can also be traced in a fairly straight line to Henry "you can have any color car you want as long as it's spattered with blood" Ford). sic semper Toyota.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-07 10:13 am (UTC)Thanks for the recommendation- I've often told people that if I ever have a car in SF again, I'd be looking at the GOLF. It's very practical from the size standpoint (the lack of parking) and I'm sure it costs less and is more gas efficient.