Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Are We Rejecting Car Culture Just in the Nick of Time?

Grist:
[T]he latest report on declining driving trends -- released today by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund -- argues that a rejection of car culture is here to stay. “The Driving Boom is over,” it declares. In fact, the report calculates that “If the Millennial-led decline in per-capita driving continues for another dozen years … total vehicle travel in the United States could remain well below its 2007 peak through at least 2040 -- despite a 21 percent increase in population.”
Critics who attribute the ongoing documentation of millennial-cohort attitudes of disinterest in car-ownership to the enforced "lowered expectations" of the sustained economic downturn are obviously speaking from the belly of the beast of car culture, and so fail to realize that those who are not bamboozled into their own fantasies of the "romance" of car-ownership are likely to have noticed the obvious, as they have not themselves, that car culture never ever delivers on its many promises of providing eternal sexy youthfulness or rugged individual autonomy or signalling delicious affluence and success to envious strangers. Who in their right minds would ever identify car ownership with high expectations or standards, after all? Many young people who for whatever reasons have learned to live perfectly well outside of car culture are little likely to embrace its fictional attractions even if and when they can afford to do so, especially if they happen to have noticed that the actual realities of car ownership include the nightmare of traffic congestion, the headaches of maintenance and insurance, the costly demands of refueling, the reality of enormously expensive yet undistinguished and indistinguishable product, and the pollution and pointless destruction of the only the planet we happen have to live in...

3 comments:

jimf said...

> Are We Rejecting Car Culture Just in the Nick of Time?

Blame it on Teh Gays.

Some edifying YouTube comments
(1959 Chevrolet Commercial With Dinah Shore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbSLq3FEE9o ):

thank God no queers were in these old commercials..you could drive a beast like that that got
12 mpg at .25 a gallon and drive for years, now these
faggy cars do 30 mpg at 4.00 a gallon and they are
all plastic...back when america was america,
now it worries about queer rights.

Hey, don't stop at seatbelts. We now have, because of
government do-gooders, head rests, air bags, padded dashboards,
bumpers that are supposed to take a bump (right),
lane change turn signals, 4-way flashers,
and enough smog controls to choke the life out of any engine. 
No wonder we have blah styling, money goes to pay
for the government mandated crap.

Back when America was truly AMERICA!!!!

jollyspaniard said...

I rejected cars just after high school. Somebody told me that guys who get cars wind up staying home and guys who didn't traveled abroad. They were right.

Dale Carrico said...

So good to see you back in the neighborhood, I missed getting my daily jollies!