Why we have to get rid of cars

In this post I write about, how much harm cars do and why we have to get rid of cars in a good system.

How cars harm people and the environment

Once in a while, you get lucky. I wanted to write this article, and one of my followed creators on nebula.tv posted a video exactly about what I wanted to write.

This post heavily relates to the paper “Car harm: A global review of automobility’s harm to people and the environment“.

If you don’t want to read it, you can watch the Video from CityNerd on YouTube or on Nebula if you have a subscription.

The paper lists 19 different harms cars are responsible for and puts them into four different categories.

• Violence
  • Crashes
  • Intentional Violence
• Ill Health
  • Air, land, and water pollution
  • Pollution
    • Noise pollution
    • Light and thermal pollution
    • Sedentary travel
    • Dependence and isolation
• Social Injustice
  • Unequal distribution of harm
  • Inaccessibility
  • Consumption of space, time, and resources
    • Car-dependent places
    • Streets and motorways (expressways)
    • Parking
    • Housing
    • Time
    • Financial burden
• Environmental Damage
  • Carbon emissions
  • Pollution and resource extraction
    • Tyres
    • Other pollution
  • Land use

It’s a long list, but in short: Cars don’t have any place in a good system.

Just to name some numbers from the paper: Cars killed more people than the two world wars combined. Every day, 700 children are killed. The pollution from cars causes several diseases. They cost society a lot. Much more than public transit or bikes, which earns the society money because of the health benefits from active travel. Cars are bad for social life because you don’t interact with other people. Except yelling at other drivers and pushing cyclists off the road.

Cars are bad for animals, people and the environment.

Going Cold Turkey

What can we do now to improve the situation?

A lot of things and it already happens. Not in every place and not in the same degree, but it happens.

Since people love listings and search engines do too, here are the nine things to do to get rid of cars now.

1. Rise the cost for parking and reduce parking spaces

Parking maybe is a worse problem than driving, since 98% of the time automobiles are not mobile but stand still and take away space from other people. All the parking makes cities hotter, because of the urban heat island effect. Planting trees and make parks instead of parking lots, would reduce heat, makes space for the people, makes the life in cities safer and streets more beautiful.

And it would reduce cost. Because even if the driver or parker pays a fee, it does not cover the real costs, which are spread to the public. Even if you don’t have a car, you pay for it. Probably a bigger part of your taxes are used for cars than for public transportation.

2. Reduce speed limits

Driving slower reduces the risk for a driver to kill someone. A lower speed limit also reduces several kinds of pollution, and streets don’t need to be as wide. So you gain space for better usage.

3. Give cars less space

Instead of building streets for cars, build them for people. Car drivers always need to take the longest way home. The most direct routes are reserved for pedestrians, public transport and bikes.

4. Reduce the Validity of driving licenses

It is absolutely insane that you take a test once and then can drive forever, without being tested ever again. Traffic regulations change, cars change, and yourself change. Let’s make it mandatory to have your capability for driving checked every ten years. This doesn’t help per se but the more friction the better.

Right now, everything is made as easy as possible for everyone to drive. But it needs to be the hardest and most unsatisfying way of transportation. And reducing the validity of driving licenses is a part of that.

5. Road toll everywhere

Make drivers pay for every kilometer they drive. They do that already, as we all do, but a toll that equals the real costs of driving makes it obvious. And the big amount will prevent people from taking the car.

6. Treat drivers like the criminals they are

Driving under the influence or speeding must be treated like attempted manslaughter. If you do either of these two things, you risk killing someone. That’s why you should be treated like a criminal.

7. No more gas

Electric mobility just solves one problem. CO₂ emissions. So they are not the solution for our future mobility. But since it will be necessary to have some cars (emergency services, buses, delivery, …) these cars have to be electric.

8. Building better infrastructure

Making driving worse, can’t be everything. We also need to build better public transportation, bike and pedestrians infrastructure. It needs to be safe and a joy using these ways of transportation, then people will do it.

9. Don’t forget those in need for help

In every discussion about cars fewer or later, someone brings up the argument

But what about those in need for help. They need cars to get from A to B

Some dude on X

First, that’s not true. Most public transportation nowadays is accessible for people who are not good by foot. Yes, there is room for improvement, but this is part of point 8.

Also, there are transportation services to help those in need.

And if there is really no other way, they can drive a car. But this will be a very low percentage in comparison to now.

How can you do something

If you do not live in an antidemocratic authoritarian country, you can call your local government, join a local NGO or other group. Vote for the party that will most likely do something against cars. And if there is none, found one.

You can spread the information to your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors. Like you did with the Coronavirus. You can also go online and on social media to spread the information there. Like you do with computer viruses.

If you live in an authoritarian country, all you can do is talk to your peer group, if that’s possible. Any further advice I have would not be legal. So visionize it.

Vision for a system without cars

Now my favorite part. And maybe it’s yours too and the only reason why you are here. Let’s visioning how a good system without cars would look like.

Kids play on the streets. If you meet someone from the neighborhood, you can easily talk to him, because it is quiet. All you hear are birds, trees and people and the tram in the next street.

You sleep much better, because you can have the window open. It’s quiet and dark outside, although you live in the city.

In the summer it is much cooler and at night the temperature gets even lower because the heat is not stored in the asphalt and cars.

You are everywhere fast. For every occasion, you use the perfect transportation mode. There is no traffic jam.

The city you live in has more money to spend for people. There are more parks, schools are free, and housing costs are much lower.

It is safe even for small kids to go to school by themselves. They learn to be independent much faster.

Your health and the health of everyone else is much better. Also, the costs for the public health system are much lower.

The risk of terror attacks and other crimes is lower.

Architecture is now completely different and more people friendly.

There are less remote towns and settlements. Which is good for the environment, because there is less infrastructure needed to be built and maintained. There is less soil colonization and destruction of habitats. Air, water and land are much less polluted.

There is less isolation. Social life is much better. You know the people around you, and it is easier to meet new people.

The next public transportation stop is a maximum of five minutes away. Everything in your everyday life can be reached within 15 minutes.

Visual utopias

For those, who need more than my sloppy description, take a look at visualutopias.com by Jan Kamensky. He turns actual cities into car free paradises. Like in the video below, where he transformed New York City’s Seventh Avenue into a utopia.

If you need more help to visualize a world without or at least less cars, watch a car commercial. They provide a good template, there is always only one car in the whole city (and mostly only one human, the one driving it, which makes these ads apocalyptic) Most of the time of course the person doesn’t even live in the city, but in the suburbs, because nobody needs a car in the city.

When I watch these commercials, I don’t want the car, I want the city without them.

Conclusion

Cars are one major factor, why our system is broken right now. Without cars, it will get better fast.

This is hard to imagine. Specially when you are a driver, but for everyone else too. Because everything is build around the car.

Cities are built so you can get everywhere by car. There are many places you can only get to by car. These places often wouldn’t even exist without cars. City centers often are dead, because of the big malls outside the city, where you only can get by car. Making living in the city worse for everyone.

Cars have such a big negative impact on our health. Even if you don’t notice it now, you will feel so much better in a world without cars.

There will always be some kind of cars. Even in our good system. But these cars are electric. We need ambulances, even when there are no more car accidents, which are responsible for many rescue missions.

We need to start building for people and not for cars.

Further Information

You haven’t had enough yet? Well, ok. In this section, I give links to additional resources. I will update, when I find something interesting. Get informed about updates in my newsletter. The link to subscribe is at the bottom of this post.

Podcast episode related to this article

Climate Town made a video about how cars became so dominant in the USA. As always very funny and very informative. If you have a nebula subscription, you can watch it here.Or you check the YouTube video

Scienentific American comes to similiar conclusioins, as I did.

Listen to the Climate Deniers Playbook, why EVs won’t save us. They colud have talk a bit more about how to change infrastructure, so we need fewer cars, but it’s interesting nevetherless. Part 1 and Part 2.

Ian DeBay

My name is Ian DeBay.

I am the founder of iandebay.com. I am a content creator, blogger, podcast, YouTuber. This is my blog where I talk about system change, sustainability and other fun stuff.