Came across this interesting article. I knew most of these facts already, but to have them put in one place, explained in detail, and peer reviewed makes it much more impactful.
"Cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people since their invention."
Probably better to think about how much time have people all together spent in the cars. Then probably 60-80 million wouldn't sound that large. But yeah, it's known that statistically cars are the least safe means of transport.
Another interesting one - every year, worldwide there are 2 million lost suitcases from all airlines. It's a huge number, but not so much compared with the number of passengers and flights in the same interval (I have no idea about, but it's very big).
You said yourself that you know these facts (like the rest of us, probably), so what's the point of this article if you already know it? More impact? More impact for what?
I once gave a definition of propaganda on a forum.
You may ask how do we know what the intentions are, easily, if the article does not present an opposing viewpoint. The intention of indoctrinating the viewer into the one point of view of the article is obvious.
If we consider this source as media, then this article is propaganda by definition.
Why would I want to read propaganda about the car harm?
I skimmed through the article though and it's horrible. It's trying to fire all guns. Often the article simply repeats the same talking points, or for example, it criticizes even interventions in human life, land use, time (because you need to drive the car) Housing cuz of "Automobility increases the cost of goods and services. The global housing crisis is largely a lack of affordable housing in cities"... f**k sake..
Automobility reduces the price of goods, not raises prices, have they even heard of the technical revolution of logistics? Without the automobile industry, we're back to the Middle Ages in terms of logistics... and because of that, prices will go up, not down, because it won't be profitable for manufacturers to deliver them that way. That would leave only shipping boats and airplanes, and those are much more expensive. And there are perishable products that will be impossible to ship over long distances without using planes.
And in the same article, under paragraph 6.2 they criticize the inaccessibility of cars....
What is this nonsense? They entire article criticizes cars, and says how bad they are, without pointing out any pros. And then they criticize cars because not everyone owns them..🤣🤣🤣 It even sounds like a stand-up joke... did anyone read that but me?
I don't care what the stated topic is or how many scientists signed off on it, but this kind of brainwashing crap is hard to find even in an authoritarian dictatorship under state military propaganda.
Yes, the modern city and so much of the landscape is designed around the car, prioritising its use above all else.
It's Easter holidays and today I drove Nicole and a friend to a skate park in a city (Poole). So much of the day was actually about cars. Driving there, driving behind other vehicles, navigating around through complicated one way systems trying to avoid colliding with other vehicles (I recently taught Leo to drive, so I'm well aware of how hard it really is, even if I'm used to it and it seems 'easy' to me). Then finding a parking space so we could go for a walk in a park while they were in the skate park. Cars absolutely everywhere, it's really quite insane if you think about it.
If they could have taken a train, that would have been so much better. And they do take a train sometimes (but not to Poole). We are lucky enough to have a station but they can either go East or West. No other direction is possible and there is no other form of public transport here.
Society should provide a lot more better means of getting around cheaply and efficiently so that people are not forced to take on the burden of car ownership and cities can become safer, cleaner, quieter, less congested and healthier. And this is without even mentioning the environmental damage at point of use or production, mineral extraction, etc.
It is a big deal and the current trajectory is totally unsustainable. I say that as someone who likes cars in many ways but actually would like not to have to own one (and don't use it much at all).
Do you have a personal life? Or do you care so much about my attention that you follow me under almost every post?
You once again show a lack of understanding of how language and definitions work. I cannot be a propaganda, (nor can any other individual) by the definition I gave above.
As a big fan of e-driven public transport(trains, trolley buses), gotta say that i dont understand people who choose to own a car while living in a middle of very big city(like Saint-Petersburg or Moscow). There is already enough public transport of any kind, but some people still prefer to own a personal vehicle by any means. Idk, this looks like second step after buying the "latest model smartphone", correct me if im wrong, lol
Hi Scawen, do you still own the E46 M3? I hope Leo got his lessons on that!
What are your thoughts of owning a car(s) as an investment or collecting/keeping them from an enthusiast point of view rather than as a mode of transport?
Yes, I still have the M3 which is now 21 years old!
We got an Aygo for Leo's lessons. I don't think the insurers would be very happy if we asked them to insure a learner on the M3. And I don't think I'd be happy with all that maneuvering practice.
Honestly it was terrifying in the earliest days, we have narrow country roads around here and apparently it's not quite as simple as it seems, to time that slowing down and tucking in to allow the oncoming cars to get past, and to steer good lines for visibility and avoid the pot holes, adjust speeds frequently for all the different situations. It's amazing how much there is to learn, to really become competent and safe.
It seemed expensive to buy the car (we were surprised by the price of used cars) but we found a good Aygo and it was nice to combine the purposes of driver training and visiting places for family walks and other activities. The price is comparable to hiring an instructor, but this way he could get more experience before taking the test, and also we still have the car when I'll start to do the same for Nicole in another year from now! We also visited Salisbury and Yeovil several times for specific training in larger towns. As he is now 18 and could leave home any time, this was one thing I wanted to do for him, as it is likely to be useful at times in his life. After 120 hours of driving, including 3 hours with professional instructors, he passed the test first time.
To answer your question, I am very happy with people having a car as an enthusiast. I'm not sure about investment as a rusting investment is a troublesome investment but if people want to do that then that is fine. I am always impressed to see old cars driving around.
The thing I have a problem with, and I've said this so many years ago, when traffic was a bit less than it is now, is the excessive use of cars. If an alien came to earth and saw a traffic jam, it would have to conclude we were not an intelligent species.
If you look objectively, a huge traffic jam in London or the M25 (circular motorway around London) that recurs every day is proof that humans aren't able to cooperate in a sensible way. The way we coordinate, almost entirely through market forces and transactions between individuals, leads to such absurd inefficiency and pollution, we really have lost our way. So many people having to live so far from where they work, in often 'pointless' jobs that don't really make anything (big subject, won't go there) and having to sit in congested traffic to get there and home again, every day. Less congested, cleaner, quieter and safer cities could only be a good thing, I believe.
Hm I didn't really want to get into any arguments with you knowing your track record on topics like this but this one is particularly interesting. From your comment it seems you're thinking the section "inaccessibility of cars" is talking about difficult access to cars? If I interpret your comment here right, it seems that you yourself didn't read this?
The second sentence explains what this section is about: "First, accessibility can refer to physical access to the built environment for people with disabilities". All of this is talking how car centered city planning/building causes accessibility issues for people with disabilities. Not once in this paragraph they mention inaccessability to owning a car as the main reason for overall inacessability in cities.
Why not? I don't have the characteristic of standing my ground in the absence of arguments unlike most people I've argued with. If I'm wrong, or if I don't have enough good arguments, I admit it. Also, my English is not good enough, and I don't always understand complex terms and context, so I might misinterpret something.
The other thing is that there's no specific topic of argument here. I just asked some questions I was trying to get an answer to. Because to me it didn't look like a person wants to provide objective information, but wants to make it more "impactful" whatever that means.
And if you want a good article with objective content, (and not a propaganda piece with scary numbers about 60 million deaths) find a good source that will review the pros and cons on the topic.
It's true that I didn't read the article in detail. Because from its bulletpoints its essence is clear.
This is true, and here are a couple more quotes:
"Rather than dissolving space, the car economy redistributes it, and most disabled people are among the losers, along with people in poor neighbourhoods and children."
"Physical (in)accessibility and social (in)accessibility overlap and reinforce one another while also interacting with economic inaccessibility."
So there is poor neighbourds and children, and economic inaccessibility.
Oh my god, those poor ones and children, how dare they
But okay, I understand that there we're also talking about road use, parking, and redistributing space by building highways. But I brought it up to show the fact that the article is firing all guns, and I think I did that.
I really didn't read the article enough, and I probably got the context wrong on that point. But what about the logistics, am I wrong there too?
You didn't get very far reading the article, then?
Am I really seeing sarcastic comments about people who cannot afford a car, while they are living in a world built around the car?
I suppose your attitude explains a lot. There are a lot of people (who I might suggest are usually "right-wing") who cannot understand 'empathy' although it is actually a fairly normal thing to feel. And if they see someone appearing to care for others they do not know, are baffled and can only assume the person speaking nicely is "virtue signalling" or similar. Well, actually there is such a thing as caring for people (and not only people, but animals and the wider natural world) even when you don't know each person or animal or tree individually.
If we are to be assumed to *only* care about our selves and close family in an immediate sense, then we might as well dig up and burn and pollute everything and destroy the planet. Because why not, the air will still be breathable for our few remaining decades.
But if empathy is a real thing (and guess what, it is) then we might care about other people and future people, and the incredible complexity of the natural world too.
Most people in the world don't have a car, and there are already far too many cars and associated pollution and destruction. If you care about equality, you cannot pretend we can get a car and roads and the supporting industries for everyone to have their own car. There isn't space or enough resources or ability for earth to clean up the mess. So we need to come up with better ways to move people around, in comfort, without hardship. The car isn't the solution, no matter if it's electric.
This article does point out several benefits of the car, but it sensibly and reasonably points out many of the problems that it creates. I guess denial is the expected response from right-wing people who are only concerned with their own personal desires, but are too afraid to look at the bigger picture.
Maybe. But since you're the one claiming, you can demonstrate the pros about the cars talked about in the article out of the context of the cons. And in this case, I agree that I was wrong.
What? If it were as you wrote it wouldn't be sarcasm. And if that's sarcasm, how do you think that works?
This sarcastic tone refers to a rhetorical trick in the article that uses the poor and children to push their agenda. Like I said the article is trying to fire all guns (use whatever methods, and whatever points they can come up with) And that doesn't mean I don't have an empathy for the poor and children.
Please don't impose imaginary characters on me. I don't consider myself neither right nor left. And in general, I consider such a system of views (right/left, democrat/republican, liberal/conservative, capitalist/socialist, communist/nationalist) to be outdated. Not everything always works as a dichotomy of two ideas. You can just approach it rationally and take what works. Usually people like me are called centrists, but I don't like to impose myself on other people's ideas as a structured set of rules from which there is no way out. It just restrains the mind and keeps it from thinking in other directions.
In general, I agree with the message of the article, if the situation can change, and the safety and convenience of cars will increase, the number of traffic jams will decrease, the streets will be relieved, the pollution and ecology will be reduced, I will be only in favour. But I persistently dislike propaganda. And people in the West tend to be ignorant of it.
No, you are the one making false claims about an article that you have not bothered to read (by your own admission, and by the fact that you are making false claims about it).
It's a well written article, pointing out the problems with excessive car use. It's not propaganda. It's a starting point for discussion, in a world mostly run by governments that are often supporting the car and neglecting (or even dismantling) other forms of transport.
It also points out many positives of cars, but that is not the purpose of the article. It's about the harm done by cars. The fact that the harm done by cars often affects those who cannot own a car, is part of the story.
So I have to prove in the article that there are no pros? How? You can't prove the absence of something. You can only prove the presence of something.
I gave out the definition of propaganda above, long before I knew about this article. I haven't seen anyone argue with my definition. And this article (if we consider the source to be media and the fact that there are no pros) is propaganda by definition.
I think this is a bit silly. The article points out benefits of the car. if you can't be bothered to read it, it's not my responsibility to find it for you.
Ok, I found this, I guess it can be considered a plus outside the context of the minuses.
While this paper focuses on harm, we recognise that cars and automobility offer important benefits to some people. They connect isolated towns and rural areas. Cars and automobility can provide transportation for people who have physical disabilities (Power, 2016). Car interiors can be sites for conversation, enjoyment of music, privacy, safety, or a respite from the outside world (Dobbs, 2005; Laurier et al., 2008). Cars can influence people's sense of self and fulfil symbolic and affective functions (Steg, 2005). These benefits are important for the people they affect, and interventions to reduce car harm need to take them into consideration.
This paper does not adhere to a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis framework wherein “costs”, e.g. harms caused by automobility, are compared with the “benefits” of automobility, e.g. those listed in the previous paragraph. It instead focuses directly on harms, as these have been deprioritised in decades of research and policy that suggest modifications to automobility (e.g. electric or autonomous cars) rather than the more politically controversial option to challenge the system of automobility (Culver, 2018; Sheller, 2018).
Okay it's not propaganda. Although the overwhelming amount of text there is about the harm of cars, although it is clear from the stated topic.
I'm pleasantly surprised to have the same vision. As a new urbanism activist since ~2012, I wouldn't expect that from racing game developer.
Modern cities are inconvenient and humiliating to those who aren't in a car. (Actually, from what I saw in Google panorams British cities are much less awful.) You get crowded buses, 200 seconds (!) red countdown for pedestrians, crossings moved hundreds metres for convenience of cars, dirty pavetments, or lack of them, subway stations designed to move you like cattle, etc.
That's not quite clear to us, young to middle age healthy males, who can quickly walk upstairs, or work hard and save up for a car. But a decade ago, I've read a guy describe his experience being on chemotherapy, getting around cities by foot. (Uber-like taxi to ride to the opposite side of a street wasn't the option back then). That was quite a revelation, that even a long red light is a burden to a weak person carrying something, e.g. pregnant woman who went for groceries.
But for a healthy adult male a baby carriage (stroller) will suffice, to feel the humiliation. Try getting on a bus, that has low floor, but stops in a metre from the kerb. Try getting through an underpass. Or ride subway in a rush hour (because on the ground, all roads are congested). (Damn, I shouldn't have visited Stockholm, where they have elevators for carriages right from the pavement level down to the very subway & rail platform. Space tech! And you don't have to fight with the doors, trying to drive the stroller in -- there are buttons that open and hold the door for you. Now I remember that at every freaking doors -- and in our city, they're two of them at every place, to keep warm in winter.)
But back to cars -- I drove enough, and I don't see how it's convenient. In many places, streets are one-way, you must do some exrta loops. Service roads to malls or big stores have weird patterns, you waste quite some time there. You waste time parking too -- looking for a free spot, getting in cul de sac and backpedalling carefully, etc. Or standing in a congestion doing nothing.
Car nowadays just saves you from humiliation of walking in the cityscape designed like industrial site.
P.S. regarding people not being able to buy a car and complaining. In Copenhagen, where you can (or as some say have to) ride a bike, you don't need to waste money on a car. Can save it up for an apartment, for vacations, and other more important things. That's why recently I got a cheap folding bike, to get to shops and around the city, to not waste money on taxis and e-scooters. Saving a few € per day.
The funny thing is, we had THE chance with the whole Corona pandemic to make a change. Work from home where possible, change the way we travel, thinking if we really need to travel in the first place, etc. But we're still doing the same now we're getting back to normal.
I work from home most of the days, and when I go to work I use one of my bikes, or public transport when the weather is bad. Of course, that's easy for me because I'm fortunate enough to live in a country where this is possible, but the majority of people are still queuing up every workday behind each other on the road.
But on this topic, cars have given/brought us so much. But we're getting super lazy and indeed are excessively using them. People rather get in their car for a 5 min walk, or go to the gym even.
I would call myself a car enthusiast, but they don't make it fun with all costs and I hate traffic jams, and I like riding on my bicycle so that helps. I only use it for vacation and other trips that are too far or inpractical by bike. Our infrastructure is perfect for it, but people are generally lazy.
Honestly not sure if you can call them real modern cities then.
If I look at The Netherlands (99% of it), and other big cities in Europe like London, Paris, Stockholm, to name a few, the infrastructure is pretty good overall, I think. Over here using a stroller, bike, or whatever is no problem at all. Especially big cities like Amsterdam are trying to get rid of cars in the center. Driving a car there is a small nightmare, and getting around by bike, public transport, or walking are much easier in general.
f**k sake..
If it were as you wrote it wouldn't be sarcasm. And if that's sarcasm, how do you think that works? 