Drive, He Said
Based on my last dispatch, one might conclude that I enjoy driving cars. One would be right.
One would also expect me to devour a book entitled Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road by Matthew Crawford.
Again, Bingo.
I’ll get to him in Part 4 of this series when I try to suture up some practical suggestions on our car-dependence, but for now, it’s suffice to say that Crawford Luv Car too.
Driving, he says, involves a healthy dose of human agency that we could lose when self-driving cars win the war for our safety.
Cost/Benefit Analysis
In the meantime, human error or not, we’re in the driver’s seat.
For most of us, who are not professional philosophers and mechanical enthusiasts like Crawford, driving is an afterthought. We do it by second nature.
Driving is a necessary (in)convenience we get to complain about.
We feel the pinch when sitting in traffic, getting stuck with repair bills, making donations to insurance brokers, feeding our tanks with gas, and immobilizing our bodies for hours at a time.
We grudgingly put up with these “taxes,” for that is what they are.
We certainly don’t think much about our cars’ deeper costs. Maybe we chose to ignore them.
Dead Man’s Curve
Each of us can visualize the face of a friend or relative lost to a traffic accident.
Consider that about 30,000 people die in cars each year in America, many of them young people who, like me, Could. Not. Wait to get their licenses.
Dare we let this sink in?
I still remember vividly the grief Warrior Run High School collectively experienced on the Monday morning after a weekend fatality that claimed four of our classmates.
Weaving along a back road through the tiny hamlet of Pioneer, four guys missed a sharp turn and plummeted into a creek, roof side down.
Kyle Snook, from my class of 1980, was one of those who struggled and drowned.
This could’ve easily have been my gang.
On a nearby road that measured a handy quarter-mile, my friend Joe raced his new Chevy pick-up against Jeff’s old Plymouth Satellite.
I was in the bed of the truck with a few other yahoos. We were heckling the hell-raisers in the car…and them us.
Then it got scary.
When Joe eclipsed 100 mph, we started shouting at him and banging on the rear window to slow the eff down.
The dread drove me to a true metaphysical moment, pleading with whatever God was out there to save us from our stupid escapade.
No wonder I devoured the story of Jesus, from Matthew on through John, on a cross-country Greyhound trek soon after graduation. I was all ears and did not put up a fight.
Death & Taxes
It doesn’t hurt to bravely face such downsides of the automobile. Consider also the time and stress added to one's life by the daily commute.
In Atlanta, GA, the average one-way drive is thirty five minutes!1
A reduction in commuting could reduce mental irritation, muscle stiffness, family strain, and fuel bills.
Our very built environment, however, as many New Urbanist and smart growth2 experts are telling us, has been centered on the car since WWII.
Books like James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere from 1994 are reasonable challenges to the hidden taxation associated with our car dependence.
For instance, when a bus rider spends $1.00, society pays $1.50.
As blue-blooded Americans, we generally look down on such expenditures as wasteful.
We’re surprised to learn that a motorist spending $1.00 is tapping into $9.20 of shared expense.3
All transportation is subsidized - the question is, how much? Walking and biking require little more than sidewalks and bike lanes…. Meanwhile, the externalities of driving are clear and huge, including the costs of policing, ambulances, time wasted in traffic, and climate change.
Drive Defensively
Our cars and highways are not freebies.
Admittedly, their benefits far outweigh their liabilities which is why we jump in and drive everyday, if not by swallowing our irritations, by suppressing the real potential that our lives are on the line.
As The Dude would always tell us,
You be careful. They’re killin’ ‘em out there every day.
His poetics were sometimes a bit grim, but he meant well and probably did more to keep us alive than a few ad campaigns.
In Part 3, I’ll take a stab at these questions:
Before cars rolled off the assembly lines, were we humans as dependent on wheeled conveyances?
Have we always lived with such assumed risk?
You may be surprised at how a few ancient texts shed light on our current situation.
In the meantime, happy motoring!
Please do it “defensively,” though, as the PA inspection sticker used to tell us.
https://www.ajc.com/news/world/atlanta-yet-again-named-one-the-worst-places-commute-transit-car-recent-ranking/Yfv86up06oBlC6y9YEpWKJ/
This is a term used for a planning philosophy that emphasizes in-fill development over sprawl and walkability over car-dependence through a myriad of disciplines. Currently, Lancaster County is halfway through a 40 year plan to aggressively curb the destruction of precious farmland while creating healthy dense human environs. It’s tough, considering our population continues to grow, and who doesn’t want a scenic view of Amish farmland? My family has contributed to smart growth in a tiny way by enjoying an “old urbanist” lifestyle in the historic city of Lancaster. Wait, there’s a city? Actually, yes, and it’s quite nice.
Jeff Speck (2018). Walkable Cities: 101 Steps to making better places. Washington: Island Press.
A reader from my hometown responded to my Dead Man's Curve section: "I remember the story well. I was almost in that car but declined to attend a party in Milton that night. I was to meet Lance Cooper the next morning when the terrible news was delivered. Lance was in my class '78. I was just reminiscing about (him) this week so a little weird to see your post. The mystery and randomness of life/death." He helped me remember the names of the other two boys killed in the crash: Mike Webb and Jeff Jeremiah. I had kept a clipping for years, but without it, the names left my memory.