W. K. Lis
Superstar
I would like to direct you to Stephen Rees's Blog and his article and another link to Car Myth, Car Realities: An Anthropology of Americans and their Automobiles by Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez.
I won't copy most of the article, you can link to it and see for yourself. I'll just quote some points below.
For me, I notice that there are more parking spaces than there are vehicles.
I won't copy most of the article, you can link to it and see for yourself. I'll just quote some points below.
There is in the US a massive government policy preference for cars. There are now
- 250,000,000 cars and light trucks
- more cars than drivers
- 91% of households own a vehicle
- 3,000,000,000 miles are driven annually
- Each person spends 18½hrs are spent in the car per week (equivalent to a part-time job)
- 162,000 gas stations
- 750,000,000 parking spaces
For me, I notice that there are more parking spaces than there are vehicles.
The talk examined five myths of car ownership
- cars make financial sense
- cars are safe
- cars are more comfortable than other modes
- cars make me an individual
- cars provide opportunity – economic especially – “people without cars are losers”.
Cars are a lot like guns: ”Try to pry my steering wheel out of my cold dead hands!”
People tend to focus on the price of gas vs the price of a train ticket (for example). The obsession with gas prices means that people do not tend to look at the entire cost of a car which is $8,000 per annum, of which gas $1,581.
We believe that kids are safer if we drive them rather than allow them to use transit and a car with the right air filter can protect us from air pollution. However the reality is that for people aged 3 to 34 the car is the No 1 killer. The rates of fatalities have remained remarkably steady over number of years but the number of severe collisions increased because we drive so much more. In 2008/9 the roads got safer because we drove less.
Research shows that people with long [car] commutes are unhappier – and so are their spouses – and it is the unpredictability of commute time that drives us mad.
When people paid cash for cars it was a fair marker of social class. These days people want to believe that their car matches their personality. The car is an accurate self expression for around 40% of drivers: the others said they can’t afford “the car that is really me”.
Cars are in reality the most significant factor in inequality: transportation takes a proportionately bigger bite of the income of the poor. At the edge of car ownership many are just one car repair or parking ticket away from carlessness. The poor are subject to higher rates for loans, dealer fraud, and insurance rates by zipcode.
Two Americans have a new book aimed at Americans. Our problems may be similar, but we heard not one word about Canada until the audience spoke. Even then I found it laughable that Torontonians love the TTC! In my experience in every city where I have been, transit users are always highly critical of their own transit system and especially the body that runs it.
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