Thomas Knierim
20th February 2005, 07:07 PM
On Automobiles
The obsession of modern society with the automobile is curious. One needs only to look at the glossy brochures of the latest car models to realize what role this implement plays in the average citizen’s life. It is far more than that of a transportation machine. The brochures impress with artful photos of car body details, gleamy metal surfaces, elegant lines, nifty technology, and imposing technical facts. They show not mere transportation machines, but highly evolved consumer products, objects of desire. Like no other possession, the automobile has taken on the role of a status symbol. It is an expression of the financial capacity of its owner, of personal taste, as well as life style preferences. People buy cars for driving as much as for parading them. Consequently, luxury cars are top-selling items all over the world. But it is not only sheer luxury that attracts consumers. According to individual tastes, car buyers prefer the kind of car that expresses their individual way of life. White collar workers drive limousines, outdoor lovers drive jeeps, young sales executives drive sport cars, families drive station wagons, individualists drive foreign brands, and the “anti establishment” part of the population drives anti establishment cars. There are many car owners who spend more time with their automobile than with their closest family. Washing and waxing become indispensable weekend routines. In more extreme cases, car owners become emotionally involved in the condition of their car. When the car is shiny and well, the owner is happy; when the car suffers, the owner suffers. Newly discovered scratches lead to contorted facial expressions and spoiled weekends. Greater damage is done to the owner’s nervous system when engine parts fail, especially the expensive ones. Of course, in the rugged environment of big city traffic, or worse -farm roads-, no automobile stays in its pristine condition for very long, so the owner is bound to suffer.
Car ownership is a very special affliction. It begins with handing over the equivalent of twelve months’ (or more) disposable income to a sales person of doubtful repute. Immediately after the purchase, further expenses are required to afford insurance, registration, and parking space. The average citizen who approaches personal bankruptcy at this point is rarely desperate enough to refrain from throwing in additional beautifications such as alloy rims, spoiler, or a sport steering wheel. The first few months of car ownership are characterized by alternate feelings of joy and sorrow. The joy is derived from the ego prop-up that the new toy provides, and the sorrow comes from contemplating the almost instant decay of its market value. What also contributes to the latter feeling is the propensity of any brand new car to attract car body damage. The new car owner’s nightmare, especially if he is also a new driver, is the total loss of his valued possession by means of driving it into an unfavorably located tree, ditch, or into another vehicle. Should the car have survived its baby phase unscathed, after approximately one year its owner will inevitably learn that the manufacturer has released a new model and that the “old” one is now worth only half of what has been paid to the dodgy dealer. This realization is often orchestrated by rising fuel costs and mounting taxes. Shortly thereafter begins the period of first wear and tear, which leads to increased maintenance costs. After a few years, the car is not only hopelessly outdated and superseded by more desirable models, but it also becomes a frequent guest at the service station. Like a an impudent lackey it provides less value and makes more demands on its master. Instead of transporting him from A to B, it develops unsightly and annoying habits, such as belching smoke, producing grinding noises, and having frequent engine hiccups. It makes its presence felt primarily by ripping holes into the annual family budget.
Until now we have enumerated only the more forgivable faults of the automobile. These might be regarded as quirks and oddities of an otherwise useful contraption. Unfortunately this is not quite accurate. The truth is that almost every car in service today –looking as snazzy and high-tech as it may– is based on 19th century technology. All the electronic components, aerodynamic parts, bells and whistles cannot belie its dated core technology. At the heart of an ordinary car is a four-stroke internal combustion engine, otherwise known as the Otto motor, named after its German inventor Nikolaus August Otto. The principle of the Otto motor hasn’t changed in 150 years. It has some really nasty properties. The engine is extremely noisy and dirty. It relies on non-renewable fossil-fuel resources. It has a poor efficiency factor. The problems associated with this technology are well studied and understood. Motor vehicles are the largest single source of atmospheric pollution worldwide. Emissions from road vehicles account for 65 percent of all carbon monoxide and 17 percent of carbon dioxide increases. Car air conditioners are the world’s largest source of atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons threatening the ozone layer. Most of the pollution from motor cars is actually caused before they are driven. The mining and manufacturing process associated with car production is responsible for this. The environmental cost of one car includes 26.5 tons of waste and 922 cubic meters of polluted air for extracting raw materials, 12 liters of crude oil in the ocean and 425 million cubic liters of polluted air for transporting raw materials, 1.5 tons of waste, 74 million cubic liters of polluted air for producing the car. This is juxtaposed by 18.4 kilos of abrasive waste and 1,016 million cubic liters of polluted air during the car’s lifetime and 102 million cubic liters of polluted air for disposing of the car.
Given these circumstances, it seems necessary to ask why people buy cars at all. The reply to this question is likely to prompt exculpation by the plea of necessity. “I need it to drive to work, to go shopping, to drive the kids to school,” are some of the most typical answers. Apparently these are good reasons for owning a car. Though in many cases they are only half-truths, because the same activities could be accomplished – albeit at a lesser degree of comfort– by using public means of transportation. A variety of public transport is readily available to those who live in cities. Utilizing public transport is in almost all cases cheaper than using a car, although few people seem to understand this. It is surprising how many car owners are given to the naive fallacy that driving to the next town is cheaper than taking the train, because the cost of fuel happens to be less than that of the train ticket. The error of thought is evident. Depreciation and maintenance costs are neither fictive entities nor inescapable evils. The true cost of ownership is much higher than some car owners would like to believe. Although for a small part of the population, those living in remote areas, the car is a necessity, for the larger part it is surely not. The car is thus a dispensable possession, at least in those cases where alternative transportation is available. Amusingly, few car owners admit this, citing footsore family members or hypothetical emergencies as main reasons for keeping a private vehicle. Since there are rarely compelling practical or economical reasons for car ownership, the chief motive must lie outside strictly rational considerations. The automobile supposedly enables its owner to go anywhere at any time. This is certainly the most important reason for buying and maintaining such an expensive and troublesome implement. The buyer perceives increased private mobility as direct empowerment. He buys not the car, but the power of moving fast and the freedom of going where he wants. The car’s other properties are only of secondary importance. Freedom and power are of course psychological entities and we must look at how they are associated with cars. There is a simple physical explanation for the latter. A car moves several times faster than a human being, hence, the sensory experience of high speed locomotion can be thrilling. What is more, the ability to move rapidly from A to B is perceived as personal power. This perception arises from being able to materialize transportation at will without physical exertion. The automobile is a sort of bodily enhancement that allows us to achieve superhuman locomotion. Combined with the function of a social status symbol, it is the ultimate ego toy and the perfect consumer item. Not without reason, people spend more money on their car than on any other consumer good.
Although the psychological dimension is powerful, one should not entirely disregard the practical reasons for car ownership. Locomotion is part of human life and the need for transportation arises daily. Although this need can largely be met by public transportation, there are some situations which require the use of a private vehicle, either because speed is of essence, because privacy important, or because the destination cannot be reached otherwise. In these cases, demand could be satisfied either by a neighborhood car pool, or by a car rental service. Since these situations arise infrequently, there is hardly a stringent need for constant access to a private car. The need is rather created by certain habits and lifestyles. It is created by a way of life that necessitates frequent transportation, which could otherwise not be accomplished, or only at a significant diminution of comfort, for example by commuting over large distances or to remote locations. Unfortunately, the tendency to adopt such lifestyles is spurred by technologically developed communities around the globe. The world is now building cities for cars and not cars for cities. Much of the 20th century land and city development was centered around the automobile. And it still is.
In America and Europe, the landscape has been built according to the needs of the car for almost a century. In the United States alone, three acres (1.2 hectares) of productive farmland are paved every minute. This comes up to 1.5 million acres or more than six thousand square kilometers per year. Two percent of the total surface of the United States and ten percent of the arable land is now paved. On a worldwide scale, car centered development has accelerated. The most frenzied growth takes place in the developing nations. Nowhere in the world do street networks and paved areas grow faster than in Asia. The number of square kilometers of land swallowed by roads and car related facilities each year is immense. It surpasses the surface used for housing by far. The reason for this can be summarized in one word: sprawl. Cities around the world are expanding and becoming metropolises. Woods and fields are turned into housing projects, industries, and roads. Communities become larger, more dispersed, and more disparate. Commercial centers are separated from residential areas, distances grow, and as a result the need for travel arises. By moving apart home and work place, entertainment and shopping areas, communities cease to be walkable and people are forced to use cars. As a consequence, resource use and pollution increase. Natural landscapes are alienated or destroyed. Fortunately it is possible to reverse this trend. Zoning and city planning have a tremendous impact on sprawl. If people are given a choice and if walking is made easy, chances are that people will walk or use transit systems. In fact, walkable communities with nearby shopping, entertainment, and recreation facilities are very sought after and achieve higher property values. Many city planners in Europe and America have realized this. They started to create smaller communities with mixed zoning and reduced travel need. Unfortunately, there is yet little awareness of the problem of sprawl throughout the developing nations.
Even if the problems of resource wastage, atmospheric pollution, and landscape degradation caused by the automobile seem hefty and worrying, there is another problem that even looms larger. It is the immense destruction of life caused by motor vehicles. The number of people killed annually in traffic accidents has exceeded 1.2 million in 2004. This means the population of an entire metropolis is wiped out every year. By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb killed 80,000 people, and the 2004 tsunami catastrophe –one of the biggest natural disasters we have witnessed in recent history– has killed up to 200,000 people. Worldwide traffic fatalities are thus equivalent to fifteen Hiroshima bombs or six tsunami waves. And they occur every year! Eighty percent of the carnage occurs in the developing countries, with India, China, and Southeast Asia leading the statistics. In these countries, traffic accidents are the number one killer of people aged between 5 and 50. The traffic in this region is more deadly than AIDS and other infectious diseases. The World Health Organization reports that in addition to the 1.2 million direct traffic victims, more than 3 million people die every year from the effects of air pollution to which the automobile is a major contributor. Even more startling is the number of animals that die each year on the roads. In the U.S. alone more than 400 million vertebrate animals are killed each year; the worldwide number probably goes into billions. Yet, people somehow seem to accept this enormous cost in human and animal life as inevitable. It is seen unanimously as an unpleasant but inescapable consequence of transportation, rather than the result of choosing a hazardous 19th century technology for the purpose of transportation.
We have moved into the 21st century meanwhile and there does not seem to be a viable replacement for the Otto motor and the automobile. Electric and solar powered cars have been researched for some time, but an upcoming replacement of the fossil-fuel powered combustion engine is not yet in sight. Nonetheless, the days of the combustion engine are counted at the latest when fossil-fuel resources near depletion, which should be pretty soon. Perhaps it is necessary to rethink not only engine and car design, but transportation in general. Do we really need all these roads? The networked society of the future might reduce the need for physical transportation. Information will travel instead of people. Since information travels at the speed of light and consumes no fuel, the environmental impact would be lessened. Of course, there will always be a need for physical transportation of people and goods. Clean and safe alternatives, such as rail and water based transit systems are already available for commercial purposes. The need for private mobility can be reduced significantly by intelligent city design. The remaining demand could be met by human powered and solar powered private vehicles. It is not hard to imagine a future without the automobile. It would be a future to breathe in.
© by Thomas Knierim
References
1. “Öko-Bilanz eines Autolebens“, Environment and Forecasting Institute in Heidelberg (UPI Umwelt- und Prognose- Institut Heidelberg e.V.)
2. Jan Lundberg & Derrick Jensen, “The Road to Ruin”
3. Figures according to 2004 report by World Health Organization, published by the Washington Post
The obsession of modern society with the automobile is curious. One needs only to look at the glossy brochures of the latest car models to realize what role this implement plays in the average citizen’s life. It is far more than that of a transportation machine. The brochures impress with artful photos of car body details, gleamy metal surfaces, elegant lines, nifty technology, and imposing technical facts. They show not mere transportation machines, but highly evolved consumer products, objects of desire. Like no other possession, the automobile has taken on the role of a status symbol. It is an expression of the financial capacity of its owner, of personal taste, as well as life style preferences. People buy cars for driving as much as for parading them. Consequently, luxury cars are top-selling items all over the world. But it is not only sheer luxury that attracts consumers. According to individual tastes, car buyers prefer the kind of car that expresses their individual way of life. White collar workers drive limousines, outdoor lovers drive jeeps, young sales executives drive sport cars, families drive station wagons, individualists drive foreign brands, and the “anti establishment” part of the population drives anti establishment cars. There are many car owners who spend more time with their automobile than with their closest family. Washing and waxing become indispensable weekend routines. In more extreme cases, car owners become emotionally involved in the condition of their car. When the car is shiny and well, the owner is happy; when the car suffers, the owner suffers. Newly discovered scratches lead to contorted facial expressions and spoiled weekends. Greater damage is done to the owner’s nervous system when engine parts fail, especially the expensive ones. Of course, in the rugged environment of big city traffic, or worse -farm roads-, no automobile stays in its pristine condition for very long, so the owner is bound to suffer.
Car ownership is a very special affliction. It begins with handing over the equivalent of twelve months’ (or more) disposable income to a sales person of doubtful repute. Immediately after the purchase, further expenses are required to afford insurance, registration, and parking space. The average citizen who approaches personal bankruptcy at this point is rarely desperate enough to refrain from throwing in additional beautifications such as alloy rims, spoiler, or a sport steering wheel. The first few months of car ownership are characterized by alternate feelings of joy and sorrow. The joy is derived from the ego prop-up that the new toy provides, and the sorrow comes from contemplating the almost instant decay of its market value. What also contributes to the latter feeling is the propensity of any brand new car to attract car body damage. The new car owner’s nightmare, especially if he is also a new driver, is the total loss of his valued possession by means of driving it into an unfavorably located tree, ditch, or into another vehicle. Should the car have survived its baby phase unscathed, after approximately one year its owner will inevitably learn that the manufacturer has released a new model and that the “old” one is now worth only half of what has been paid to the dodgy dealer. This realization is often orchestrated by rising fuel costs and mounting taxes. Shortly thereafter begins the period of first wear and tear, which leads to increased maintenance costs. After a few years, the car is not only hopelessly outdated and superseded by more desirable models, but it also becomes a frequent guest at the service station. Like a an impudent lackey it provides less value and makes more demands on its master. Instead of transporting him from A to B, it develops unsightly and annoying habits, such as belching smoke, producing grinding noises, and having frequent engine hiccups. It makes its presence felt primarily by ripping holes into the annual family budget.
Until now we have enumerated only the more forgivable faults of the automobile. These might be regarded as quirks and oddities of an otherwise useful contraption. Unfortunately this is not quite accurate. The truth is that almost every car in service today –looking as snazzy and high-tech as it may– is based on 19th century technology. All the electronic components, aerodynamic parts, bells and whistles cannot belie its dated core technology. At the heart of an ordinary car is a four-stroke internal combustion engine, otherwise known as the Otto motor, named after its German inventor Nikolaus August Otto. The principle of the Otto motor hasn’t changed in 150 years. It has some really nasty properties. The engine is extremely noisy and dirty. It relies on non-renewable fossil-fuel resources. It has a poor efficiency factor. The problems associated with this technology are well studied and understood. Motor vehicles are the largest single source of atmospheric pollution worldwide. Emissions from road vehicles account for 65 percent of all carbon monoxide and 17 percent of carbon dioxide increases. Car air conditioners are the world’s largest source of atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons threatening the ozone layer. Most of the pollution from motor cars is actually caused before they are driven. The mining and manufacturing process associated with car production is responsible for this. The environmental cost of one car includes 26.5 tons of waste and 922 cubic meters of polluted air for extracting raw materials, 12 liters of crude oil in the ocean and 425 million cubic liters of polluted air for transporting raw materials, 1.5 tons of waste, 74 million cubic liters of polluted air for producing the car. This is juxtaposed by 18.4 kilos of abrasive waste and 1,016 million cubic liters of polluted air during the car’s lifetime and 102 million cubic liters of polluted air for disposing of the car.
Given these circumstances, it seems necessary to ask why people buy cars at all. The reply to this question is likely to prompt exculpation by the plea of necessity. “I need it to drive to work, to go shopping, to drive the kids to school,” are some of the most typical answers. Apparently these are good reasons for owning a car. Though in many cases they are only half-truths, because the same activities could be accomplished – albeit at a lesser degree of comfort– by using public means of transportation. A variety of public transport is readily available to those who live in cities. Utilizing public transport is in almost all cases cheaper than using a car, although few people seem to understand this. It is surprising how many car owners are given to the naive fallacy that driving to the next town is cheaper than taking the train, because the cost of fuel happens to be less than that of the train ticket. The error of thought is evident. Depreciation and maintenance costs are neither fictive entities nor inescapable evils. The true cost of ownership is much higher than some car owners would like to believe. Although for a small part of the population, those living in remote areas, the car is a necessity, for the larger part it is surely not. The car is thus a dispensable possession, at least in those cases where alternative transportation is available. Amusingly, few car owners admit this, citing footsore family members or hypothetical emergencies as main reasons for keeping a private vehicle. Since there are rarely compelling practical or economical reasons for car ownership, the chief motive must lie outside strictly rational considerations. The automobile supposedly enables its owner to go anywhere at any time. This is certainly the most important reason for buying and maintaining such an expensive and troublesome implement. The buyer perceives increased private mobility as direct empowerment. He buys not the car, but the power of moving fast and the freedom of going where he wants. The car’s other properties are only of secondary importance. Freedom and power are of course psychological entities and we must look at how they are associated with cars. There is a simple physical explanation for the latter. A car moves several times faster than a human being, hence, the sensory experience of high speed locomotion can be thrilling. What is more, the ability to move rapidly from A to B is perceived as personal power. This perception arises from being able to materialize transportation at will without physical exertion. The automobile is a sort of bodily enhancement that allows us to achieve superhuman locomotion. Combined with the function of a social status symbol, it is the ultimate ego toy and the perfect consumer item. Not without reason, people spend more money on their car than on any other consumer good.
Although the psychological dimension is powerful, one should not entirely disregard the practical reasons for car ownership. Locomotion is part of human life and the need for transportation arises daily. Although this need can largely be met by public transportation, there are some situations which require the use of a private vehicle, either because speed is of essence, because privacy important, or because the destination cannot be reached otherwise. In these cases, demand could be satisfied either by a neighborhood car pool, or by a car rental service. Since these situations arise infrequently, there is hardly a stringent need for constant access to a private car. The need is rather created by certain habits and lifestyles. It is created by a way of life that necessitates frequent transportation, which could otherwise not be accomplished, or only at a significant diminution of comfort, for example by commuting over large distances or to remote locations. Unfortunately, the tendency to adopt such lifestyles is spurred by technologically developed communities around the globe. The world is now building cities for cars and not cars for cities. Much of the 20th century land and city development was centered around the automobile. And it still is.
In America and Europe, the landscape has been built according to the needs of the car for almost a century. In the United States alone, three acres (1.2 hectares) of productive farmland are paved every minute. This comes up to 1.5 million acres or more than six thousand square kilometers per year. Two percent of the total surface of the United States and ten percent of the arable land is now paved. On a worldwide scale, car centered development has accelerated. The most frenzied growth takes place in the developing nations. Nowhere in the world do street networks and paved areas grow faster than in Asia. The number of square kilometers of land swallowed by roads and car related facilities each year is immense. It surpasses the surface used for housing by far. The reason for this can be summarized in one word: sprawl. Cities around the world are expanding and becoming metropolises. Woods and fields are turned into housing projects, industries, and roads. Communities become larger, more dispersed, and more disparate. Commercial centers are separated from residential areas, distances grow, and as a result the need for travel arises. By moving apart home and work place, entertainment and shopping areas, communities cease to be walkable and people are forced to use cars. As a consequence, resource use and pollution increase. Natural landscapes are alienated or destroyed. Fortunately it is possible to reverse this trend. Zoning and city planning have a tremendous impact on sprawl. If people are given a choice and if walking is made easy, chances are that people will walk or use transit systems. In fact, walkable communities with nearby shopping, entertainment, and recreation facilities are very sought after and achieve higher property values. Many city planners in Europe and America have realized this. They started to create smaller communities with mixed zoning and reduced travel need. Unfortunately, there is yet little awareness of the problem of sprawl throughout the developing nations.
Even if the problems of resource wastage, atmospheric pollution, and landscape degradation caused by the automobile seem hefty and worrying, there is another problem that even looms larger. It is the immense destruction of life caused by motor vehicles. The number of people killed annually in traffic accidents has exceeded 1.2 million in 2004. This means the population of an entire metropolis is wiped out every year. By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb killed 80,000 people, and the 2004 tsunami catastrophe –one of the biggest natural disasters we have witnessed in recent history– has killed up to 200,000 people. Worldwide traffic fatalities are thus equivalent to fifteen Hiroshima bombs or six tsunami waves. And they occur every year! Eighty percent of the carnage occurs in the developing countries, with India, China, and Southeast Asia leading the statistics. In these countries, traffic accidents are the number one killer of people aged between 5 and 50. The traffic in this region is more deadly than AIDS and other infectious diseases. The World Health Organization reports that in addition to the 1.2 million direct traffic victims, more than 3 million people die every year from the effects of air pollution to which the automobile is a major contributor. Even more startling is the number of animals that die each year on the roads. In the U.S. alone more than 400 million vertebrate animals are killed each year; the worldwide number probably goes into billions. Yet, people somehow seem to accept this enormous cost in human and animal life as inevitable. It is seen unanimously as an unpleasant but inescapable consequence of transportation, rather than the result of choosing a hazardous 19th century technology for the purpose of transportation.
We have moved into the 21st century meanwhile and there does not seem to be a viable replacement for the Otto motor and the automobile. Electric and solar powered cars have been researched for some time, but an upcoming replacement of the fossil-fuel powered combustion engine is not yet in sight. Nonetheless, the days of the combustion engine are counted at the latest when fossil-fuel resources near depletion, which should be pretty soon. Perhaps it is necessary to rethink not only engine and car design, but transportation in general. Do we really need all these roads? The networked society of the future might reduce the need for physical transportation. Information will travel instead of people. Since information travels at the speed of light and consumes no fuel, the environmental impact would be lessened. Of course, there will always be a need for physical transportation of people and goods. Clean and safe alternatives, such as rail and water based transit systems are already available for commercial purposes. The need for private mobility can be reduced significantly by intelligent city design. The remaining demand could be met by human powered and solar powered private vehicles. It is not hard to imagine a future without the automobile. It would be a future to breathe in.
© by Thomas Knierim
References
1. “Öko-Bilanz eines Autolebens“, Environment and Forecasting Institute in Heidelberg (UPI Umwelt- und Prognose- Institut Heidelberg e.V.)
2. Jan Lundberg & Derrick Jensen, “The Road to Ruin”
3. Figures according to 2004 report by World Health Organization, published by the Washington Post