Peace and Planning

In the last post I shared my views about expanding our vocabulary to vehicular violence to encapsulate all the direct, structural, and cultural violence of cars. This characterization begs the question: are cars inherently violent?

Just because this blog is titled “Peace and Planning” doesn’t mean there isn’t room for unpopular opinions – and one that will likely not sit easily with people is the notion that cars are inherently violent. I haven’t always thought that way, but the more I’ve sat with the question, the more my views have shifted (in large part thanks to Gregg Culver’s 2018 article Death and the Car: On (Auto)Mobility, Violence, and Injustice, which is a much better read than this if you’re looking for more). In no particular order, they go like this:

• Cars remove people from the public realm (streets). When you remove the ability to hear (because your windows are up) or see (because your windows are tinted or because your car is so high off the ground) people using other modes, that degrades our social fabric. While I understand people may argue that’s exactly the point, I’m positing that those conditions fundamentally change the nature of our public streets and the quality of our connections. Maybe violence is too strong of a word to describe this social condition, but I’d be interested in learning about a peaceful society where some people remove themselves from the public sphere at the same time they move through it. Seems to me when people can opt out of such practices it doesn’t inspire a lot of warm and cuddlies.
• Beyond traveling comfortably (to include not having to engage with anyone you don’t want to, see above), the main function of cars is to travel at speed. We know this to be true because drivers do not follow posted speed limits, they speed in between speed bumps, they resist efforts to enforce speeding laws, they do not support technologies like speed governors/intelligent speed assistance, and cars are built to travel *far* beyond speeds that are illegal. Unfortunately, fast-moving cars are also deadly cars. Deadly = violent. Which brings me to…
• Cars are built to withstand tremendous impact. How many times over the course of your life have you seen footage of a car crash test happening in a controlled facility? What other products do we use that advertise – even celebrate – how good they are at preventing you from dying due to interactions with others of its kind? How many crashes have you seen happen, known happen to loved ones, witnessed the aftermath of, or been in yourself?
• Cars turn us into the worst version of ourselves. The tricky thing about driving is that because of the way our communities are built, pretty much everyone else does it. Except when other people do it, they do it the wrong way. And they do it at the wrong times. And they do it too slowly. In other words, they do it in all the ways that enrage us, make us less patient, make us less kind.

Most folks don’t realize that the number of people who die in car crashes every year in the US is comparable to the number of people who die due to gun violence. Not many people equate these two public health epidemics, but there are other similarities worth noting. For one, every time a driver almost hits a pedestrian, cycler, or someone else outside of a car, you could argue that’s the same outcome as someone shooting a gun into the air and not hitting anyone. When I have encountered a close call I get (at best) a hurried “Sorry!” from the driver mouthed behind their window and (at worst) a grin or expletive as the driver whizzes past me. How many times have you dodged a speeding bullet car while trying to cross the street? I’m guessing a lot more often than your risk of being shot…

How else do cars resemble guns? Perhaps no two cultural items are more attached to notions of what it means to be an American than guns and cars. Try to take a gun away from an unwavering proponent of the Second Amendment and you’ll get an earful about how you’re infringing on their rights and taking away their freedom. Try to create a 15-minute city or invest in public and active transportation infrastructure that might make our mobility network *ever so slightly* more balanced between all the modes people use to travel and you’ll be accused of infringing on their rights (to what, I’m never sure) and taking away their freedom (to sit in traffic?). And lest you think these reactions are only found at MAGA rallies (okay, maybe only the conspiracy theories are), I can assure you concerns about restricting freedom and assuming a god-given right to drive are alive and well in the most liberal cities in the US. I don’t know about you, but when there are things that we hold onto so tightly that we start to hear these kind of echoes, my spidey senses go on high alert (don’t yours?). It reminds me of Christian Lous Lange’s quotation of “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master”…if we haven’t yet reached the point where cars have become our dangerous masters, when will we?

I imagine there are other ways, but that should be enough to make my point…and hopefully to get the gears in your head turning a bit. I’ll unpack one more aspect of our language around car culture in my next blog post – in the meantime, I invite you to get curious – what comes to mind when you envision a more peaceful transportation system? ✌️🚸