Car Culture was a Mistake Part 0: Driver, Less Cars

Well, I had planned on writing a series of posts on the state of automobiles in America but, this being the internet shit bird vultures lie in wait to insult you and hide behind pseudonyms.  Sure it's infuriating but, this the information/social media age...  anyway back to this post.

In a post Labor Day vacation to the National Parks in Montana and Wyoming, I took a drive up the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park.  In 1932 the roadway was first laid out with it's low-grade, tight switchbacks, and stone arch abutments leading tourists to Logan's Pass.  Of course, one of the problems is you are trusting people who may or may not have driving skills for a narrow roadway with a deep nearly guard rail free drop.

America's so-called "love affair" with automobiles is, right now, an unassailable state of affairs, this may change in the future but, it will be a slow process.  For the foreseeable future, including the transition to all electric in this decade, everyone will still cling to the idea of having their own hermetically sealed pod to travel from point to point.  

I say so-called because "America's love affair with the automobile" was a carefully crafted plot.  Freedom,  Independence, The Open Road, were all sold to Americans as the key to their Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.  However, counter-culture icon Jack Kerouac's fame came from his work On the Road, the semi-factual philosophical treatise of Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the oeuvre of The Boss, including his first magnum opus Born to Run, the original Back to the Future featured an iconic/idosyncratic car as it's not-so-subtle vehicle (pun intended) to let the American people get back to their nostalgic past again, all of these came about after a long-string of decision points in American history ensured cars and the network of roadways necessary for cars to function were the dominant form of travel.

Much of this was a deliberate choice by America as white flight from cities into suburbs and now exurban environments was pushed as the American Dream of being a member of the landed gentry; your own small feudal estate with workers to mow your lawn and half your property being a "carriage house" to store your fleet of vehicles.

The worst problem with automobiles in America; Drivers.  Drivers are terrible; rushed, inattentive, dangerous, overconfident, reckless, drunk, and prone to fits of rage.  The atomization and enclosed cockpit leads to a fighter pilot mentality directly contributing to aggressive driving; that a term like Road Rage is well-known and documented by thousands of hours of Youtube videos, and page hit after page hit and hundreds of accidents daily; including pedestrian and cyclist fatalities.

Cyclists being hit by cars and drivers in Chicago is so pervasive the Illinois crash report forms have a special yes/no box called "Dooring".  WBEZ had a long story on the 1600 car/cyclist crashes (a warted of which were hit-and-runs) and the inadequacy of Chicago's painted bike lanes which means bicyclists often take their health and safety into the hands of people who often don't have those hands on the wheel.

Pedestrian fatalities have risen, both in real numbers and as an increased percentage of total car related
deaths every year since 2010.  There are numerous contributing factors but, Drivers are the prime problem.  And... only in a Nation wedded to cars would the solution be to keep the car and take the driver out.  Which means everyone is rushing head-long to make Driver, Less Cars the new normal.