1) Cars are much more
pervasive and invasive than one can imagine. The fact that “there is no spot in
the lower 48 of the United States more than 22 miles from the nearest road”(Carjacked
6) exemplifies that the great American wilderness has been explored and
conquered. Where the car once meant
escape from society, now it simply represents a common practice for moving
about in society.
2) The design of our
communities has led to increased car dependence. We no longer live in downtown areas, as
downtowns are becoming more and more sparse as people move to the suburbs. Large box stores which offer all goods in one
place take the market of small shops.. Our suburban sprawl home ‘towns’ are "lacking any center, lacking any shops
or public buildings, lacking places of work or of play" (geography of
nowhere, 14), and instead resemble household islands connected only by car
patrolled roads. Without a central
shopping area or businesses near our
homes, we must drive to get food or goods.
3) Our increased car
dependence leads to decreased health, which leads in turn to increased car
dependence. When we drive, we aren’t
exercising at all in our travels. As a
bus or subway rider, and especially as a biker or pedestrian, one must expend
energy to get from place to place. In a car, you sit in a seat and go to your
destination, in fact “the Centers for Disease Control has placed a good portion
of blame for the problem of obesity in the united states squarely on”(162 carjacked)
cars. There is very little walking
involved from the inevitable parking spot to your overall end goal, as compared
to the walk from a train station to a nearby business. Additionally, from our cars we are polluting
the air that pedestrians travel in. Our
driving decreases both our health through our sedentary disposition and
pedestrians’ as they breath in our exhaust, making it harder to travel outside
of a car, and making it more likely that people travel using cars.
4) We love our cars as if
they were animate objects to the extent that we put them above many animate
objects. We name our cars. We spend money on them when we
shouldn’t. They are an expensive habit,
and can result in consequences like the ones felt by one poor woman after “Four
years and a total of $27,000 later, she [found that she] had no car, no
savings, and ruined credit”(79 carjacked).
Cars are branded as a good investment, but in reality they are a money
sink that only loses its value over time.
5) There is a ridiculous
amount of government spending on maintaining car culture as it is today, but it
would cost a lot to change the infrastructure to a new design too. Driving requires constant refurbishing, redesigning,
and rebuilding of roadways, which adds up to tax spending around “$30 billion a
year on transportation, the great majority of which was to build and repair
roads and bridges used primarily by cars and trucks”(10 carjacked). This money comes out of every adult’s pocket
in the U.S. and could be used for much better purposes, such as improving
spaces for bikes: a much less space intensive means of traveling.
6) All car names are about
escaping. The car symbolized how to get
away from society and the “model names invite the driver to see his or herself
as an explorer in nature” (16 carjacked). The Explorer, Quest, Odyssey, Range
Rover, and even the obvious Escape are often pictured alongside cars in ads
where the car is off in the wilderness on a lone road, or off-roading in the
mud and snow. Most often people do no
use their vehicles in this glorified fashion, but an image of a car in miles of
bumper-to-bumper traffic is much less appealing for some reason.
7) Car purchases aren’t made
entirely on facts usually, but are based on the limbic and reptilian brain as
well. Car ads play highly to a buyer’s
emotions, making them want to drive a car based on how it makes them feel,
rather than the facts (MPG, safety, cost) about the car. Today, "buyers are much more likely to be in
the market because they are tired of the current car"(64) due to
advertising campaigns that make viewers always want to buy new ones to stay up
to date with features. Each car represents a different niche, and “selling cars
is like selling perfume or this year’s fashions”.
8) You often judge a person
by their car. Successful business people
drive nice cars, if they don’t their work is impaired. Teenagers are bad and reckless drivers, girls
drive certain cars and men others. Individually, “We become attracted to a class
of car or a bran because of the soft or emotional appeal of its marketed
image”(41 carjacked) which are specifically designed to target our individual
demographics.
9) People miss out on many
opportunities if they can’t afford a car and “the poor often live in rural
areas or inner city neighborhoods far from the areas where jobs are now most
plentiful”(104 carjacked), and lack of car ownership makes it hard to escape
these confines. You physically cannot have certain jobs that require a car; one
unhappy employee was offered a raise but “couldn’t accept the job because I had
no way to get”(104 carjacked) to the new office. Not having money to buy a nice
car can lead to more frequent mechanic trips, and missed work further
continuing the cycle.
10) Our cars make us less
likely to interact with other human beings. One of the most universal interactions
is the sharing of food, but “because we so often drive alone, and we so often
eat on the road, we often eat alone”(163 carjacked). The small connections with
our fellow humans are most often represented through anger at other “cars” for
not doing the right thing. You almost
never meet the person behind the wheel of car, and never realize that they might
be someone who you can relate to and isn’t a waste of space on this beautiful
planet we are forced to share.
Thank you for an amazing semester! I learned more than I ever expected, and had way more fun than I thought I could in class.
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