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.

Car Culture was a Mistake Part 1: Cars facilitate crime

See the U-S-A! In your Chev-ro-let! 

Cars allow you a freedom to go almost anywhere you'd want to in the Western Hemisphere.  That freedom of movement is a double-edged sword as criminals use cars to facilitate their sprees and expand the scope and range of their targets.

Dillinger Alleyway 

This should have been obvious since the rampages of the notorious Texass duo of Bonnie & Clyde and the roguish 20th century "Robin Hood" John Dillinger and the less scrupulous Lester "Baby Face Nelson" Gillis, both of whom died in gunfights in Illinois, after being declared Public Enemy #1.  Stolen vehicles and car chases figured prominently for each and everyone of the famous outlaws.  100 years later not much has changed.  

Thieves and criminal gangs (mainly comprised of juveniles) leave Chicago and descend upon the suburbs to steal any that are unlocked.  Everyone uses the vernacular "Break-into" when describing these thefts but, 95% of the time the vehicle is unlocked and the ones which are stolen have the keys left inside.  The pattern is as predictable as it is infuriating.  The gang of thieves drive down a side-street and check every car parked on the street or driveway.  If the car is locked they move on, if it's open they try the push-button starter to see if the keys were left inside, if the keys aren't inside, they root around and may take a wallet or cash.  But, their goal is to steal a car whose registration checks from a suburban address (to allay suspicion) in which they conduct further crimes and then often dump after crashing it.

There are several other issues; one is the so-called "Kia Boys", who learned to exploit an unforgivable loop-hole in the manufacture of Hyundais and Kias in which a simple USB could be used to start the cars.  The car makers settled a $200 million class action lawsuit in May this year.

From the Wild West to Bootlegging,
Dodge has always been synonymous with Crime

Unlike, the "Kia Boys", joyriding antics the thieves who steal cars under the MOPAR umbrella; Jeeps, Chryslers, Dodges, often use them in the commission of higher level felonies.  MOPAR appears to be susceptible to cloning or hacking of their on-board computers/electronic keys.

Chicago police say that five-to-six suspects used a pair of vehicles to smash through the front door of a River North business early Tuesday during a smash-and-grab burglary.
According to authorities, the theft occurred in the 700 block of North Franklin just before 6 a.m. Tuesday.

The suspects used two vehicles, a pickup truck and a white sedan, to break through the front of the building. The suspects then entered the business, stole an unspecified amount of merchandise, and fled the scene in the pickup truck.
Police say the white sedan was left at the scene.

Of course, much of this non-stop rash of stolen cars could be mitigated by people locking their cars and the smash-and-grab of purses from front seats stopped by simply not leaving your purse in the driver compartment of the vehicle, but that would be victim-blaming.  Instead we let the worse demagogues engage in contemptible racist demonization of those people and engaging truly dangerous authoritarian undermining of Constitutional protections in the name of Safety and Law&Order. 

A wave of progressive prosecutors have won office across the country. Now, Republican-controlled state legislatures and governors are trying to curtail their power, or strip them of it altogether.

It must never be forgotten that Republicans full-heartedly believe in a Two-Tier Justice system and the unequal application of laws, which is why they are so mad that justice is blind and being applied to Traitor Trump and the Jan6th criminals for instance, instead of "rightly" being used to harass an punish minorities.  

Hey Tea Party! Mitt Romney spikes the football and takes the credit for the Saving the Auto Industry and creating Government Motors

Professional candidate, Vulture Capitalist Mitt Romney is now spiking the football and taking credit for the Auto Bailout. “So I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back,” Mitt Romney.

Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh Tea Party! Remember all that internet bile and vitriol you spewed at President Obama for creating Government Motors? Here's Chicago's own Warner Todd Huston's lambasting President Obama and Government Motors. So what are you going to do now? Blame Mitt Romney for the Auto Bailout or Praise him? Or be the cheap tawdry frauds we all know you are and claim credit while still bashing President Obama for saving millions of American jobs?

Besides the sham Tea Party this whole claim by Mitt Romney is beyond ridiculous. Mitt Romney is a despicable fraud, who profits off of firing Americans and reducing their standard of living. Everyone knows Mitt Romney proclaimed loudly Let Detroit Go Bankrupt. Here's the telling line from Romney,

It would permit companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs.

What Mitt was declaring was let the American workers and Union Labor get shafted while the rump of the companies could be bought up cheaply by Bain Capital and other Vulture Capitalists.

Romney made his fortune on buying companies laying off workers and selling off assets to artificially raise the "value" of the company and then selling off the husk of a company for profit. This is how Romney and the Hedge Fund Vultures with whom he congregates operate.

Shameless. Years ago I correctly summed up Romney's character [See my post: Uncle Mitty and Blood in the Water].

It's unbelievable, Romney is The Dauphin of the Republican Aristocratic Kleptocracy, as the Son of a Governor and Presidential Candidate and then a life long college student, draft dodger, "hard working" consultant and now professional politician. Romney has never done an honest days worth of work in his life opting instead to be a professional socialist, a bureaucrat through and through who has lived his life of leisure and largess at the expense of the American Taxpayer. Fittingly as a Republican he is also a Chicken Hawk, bravely wanting to risk the lives of other men's sons while his sons sacrifice for America by trying to get him elected President. His perfect hair is greased with the oily drippings of his rank cowardice.

If Romney is elected, you can expect his buddies the 1% of the 1% to reap massive amounts of Tax Payer Assistance while the Poor and Middle Class pay higher taxes and see their pensions, social security and Medicare all funneled into the coffers of the Plutocrats.

Update:
A Fantastic Post by Green Eagle, Mitt Romney's Excellent Adventure at Bain Capital, does a great job of summing up Romney's horrid record of killing American jobs to squeeze a few extra bucks for his off-shore accounts and Wall Street portfolios.

2012

I'm waiting until the Autumn of 2012, to purchase my next vehicle. It's going to be a nice light truck, preferably from GM or Ford. I'm giving them 2 years to produce a 20+mph city vehicle with a decent V6. If the Ford Ranger replacement, the F-100, isn't ready or isn't made for US and Chevrolet is gone or still producing the woeful Colorado I'll go with the Toyota Tacoma Access Cab PreRunner or a Nissan Frontier.

On the Plus side if the 12/21/12, Long Mayan Calendar or the Nostradamus predictions are correct I'll only have a few months of car payments to make. And a tough little truck to carry me to higher ground from where I can proclaim Sic Transit Gloria Mundi... While Videotape plays...

Of course, I don't believe in the 2012 Doomsday malarkey, so I'd better ensure I get Zero Percent financing...