While the posts shared on this Twitter account may seem a bit extreme, it’s understandable why people would advocate for less car-dependent cities, for the sake of the environment and simply to make our lives easier. To learn more about why it’s wise to start thinking about alternatives to car use, we reached out to Kea Wilson, Senior Editor of Streetsblog USA. Founded in 2006, Streetsblog is a daily news site that covers the movement to end car dependence in the United States, and to facilitate a just transition to a transportation system where everyone has meaningful access to mobility alternatives that meet their unique needs.
Kea was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda, noting that she definitely wouldn't consider herself "anti-car,” as “like nearly everyone else in the U.S., I drive one, and sometimes I even enjoy it. But I'm definitely anti-car dependency, and the difference is really important.”
“In a city designed around giving people a range of great, broadly accessible transportation choices like walking, biking, transit, a car is just a tool that's good for filling the gaps: getting to that one weird corner of town that doesn't have bus service yet but is still way too far away to walk, transporting a huge load of stuff that you can't carry on a bike or fit on a train, stuff like that,” Kea explained.
“In a car-dependent city, though — and in America, that's most of them — the overwhelming majority of trips more or less have to be taken by car, even if you're just going around the corner and carrying nothing at all, because you stand a strong risk of being killed by a driver or left stranded by a late bus if you don't,” Kea continued. “And a whole mess of negative impacts cascade from forcing virtually everyone to being forced to make that choice, not least of which is a dying planet and millions of dead people on our roadways.”
“I'm not anti-car. But I'm also certainly not pro-car — or at least, I don't believe all the tradeoffs we've made to make driving our national, blanket default were worth it in any way,” she added.
Kea also notes that there are countless reasons why we should be reducing our dependency on cars, primarily reasons why we can’t afford not to. “Transportation is the leading source of global emissions, and a ton of modeling shows that there is literally no feasible way to achieve our climate targets without reducing how much we drive, even if we electrify the vehicle fleet as rapidly as humanly possible,” she told Bored Panda.
“Cars (and all the maintenance, insurance, fuel, and sometimes, legal fees that come with them) are also one of the biggest sources of consumer debt, and all the parking and road space we build to accommodate their universal use is a massive driver of sky-high American housing costs; it's maybe the single biggest ingredient in persistent poverty, and it will be impossible to end it without getting those costs down.”
“Between car crashes, which killed nearly 43,000 people in the US alone last year, and all the health impacts of automotive pollution, sedentary lifestyle diseases and mental health epidemics linked directly to how little we walk and bike for transportation, car dependency is one of our single greatest public health threats, too,” Kea noted. “it's still the leading cause of death for children under 12, and we can't bring America's falling life expectancy back up unless we follow other countries' lead and start trying to stop these preventable deaths. Needless to say, all of those things impact communities of color and low income far more than white communities.”
When it comes to minimizing car dependency in your own life, Kea says the best step to take is getting involved in the movement to end it for everyone. “Vote for politicians that understand what's wrong with by-default driving; get involved in the fight to make your cities better to navigate outside a vehicle,” she shared. “If nothing else, read sites like Streetsblog to learn as much as you can about this massive, incredibly multi-faceted problem and get ideas for how you can be part of solving it.”
Kea also recommends that anyone who is privileged enough to have some ways they can become less car-dependent in their daily life start exploring those options. “I think it's particularly important to experiment with habits when we have the opportunity to make big life changes," she says. "If your daughter is starting school this year, maybe this is the year you organize a ‘bike bus’ with all the neighborhood kids so they can all ride together (and you can skip waiting in the long drop-off line of SUVs).”
“If you're starting a new job, maybe you research the local bus routes and see if you can get a jump on some of your daily tasks while you're still riding, and maybe even leave a little early at the end of the day; just try it for a month and see if it works for you,” the expert continued. “If you're moving to a new town, do as much as you can to find an apartment in an area with a few restaurants nearby that you know you'll go to a lot instead of always schlepping across town. And even if you truly do need to keep driving for 100% of trips, could you at least drive a smaller car that'd be less lethal to pedestrians if you got in a crash, rather than an SUV that's likely to kill them, so your neighbors who don't or can't have a car at all are a little less scared to walk themselves?”
Kea acknowledged that all of these solutions require significant privilege, but “they're all versions of things that low-income car-free people without the privilege of being able to choose how they get around manage things; we can all learn a lot from them.”
Kea also noted that she understands why some people have negative reactions to groups like [Screw] Cars and phrases like #BanCars. “A lot of us love our cars, and view them as powerful symbols of our freedom and identity. And even if we don't, a car, on its own, is an inanimate object, and one that can be hugely useful,” she told Bored Panda.
“If I didn't know what I know about the way that car dependency harms myself and literally everyone I know, I could understand why randos on the internet who are egging suburban car owners' houses or deflating SUV tires to make a point might seem pretty extreme,” she continued. “I also get why calling a kid's toy car set ‘propaganda’ might seem kinda ludicrous, the same way that candy cigarettes, on their own, seem like a harmless snack, if you compartmentalize the fact that cigarettes kill a ton of people.”
