Cars and Choices

William S. Lear rael at dejanews.com
Thu May 7 08:59:45 PDT 1998


On Wed, May 6, 1998 at 15:02:30 (-0700) michael writes:
>...
>I dislike cars and the car culture. Cars have destroyed traditional
>neighborhoods and along with them much potential solidarity.

Funny, despite my distaste for cars as a means of mass transportation, I have always liked (driving) cars, due no doubt to my father's heroic tales of his Mercedes 300SL gullwing when I was a kid. I also think a bit too much blame is given to cars for destroying neighborhoods. We shouldn't underestimate the purposeful construction of bedroom communities without sidewalks, street-lamps, nearby shops, parks, and public meeting places, which (as Michael says) obviously helps to keep people isolated and away from meaningful interaction that might lead to the always dreaded popular political action.

Regarding Yoshie's very astute observation about the low-grade attention required when driving, I'll bet this pushes people into getting high-performance cars, cars with innumerable luxuries, loud stereos, etc. It's far from low-grade when you are jamming to Aerosmith with your foot mashed to the floor and your 7 1/2 liter 420 horsepower V-8 pushing you in an air-fouling blur through the landscape. See, the car shills at Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Road & Track, etc. are really just friends of the worker, trying to help them alleviate the factory-like tedium...

Bill



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