Self-Driving Cars Will Save Us – Says The Auto Industry

OUR LOVE AFFAIR WITH CARS IS KILLING US

Car dependency is an addiction. It’s killing us and killing the planet. It’s a human health epidemic environmentally and physically.

We’ve been enslaved by cars since the titans of the auto industry figured out just like drug dealers that they could sell millions of vehicles with the promise of freedom, happiness, power, and personal identity. Suburbs were designed so that we have to drive everywhere, and a house with a one car garage led to the dream of a two-car garage, bigger and badder vehicles, and toxic car ads like this that appeal to many Americans

When the Surgeon General’s report came out in 1964, tobacco companies needed to figure out how to promote “safe” smoking, knowing that it was impossible. (They’re still trying with vaping.) The auto industry is doing the same thing, promoting vehicles with the promise that AI technology will bring about safe driving, knowing it’s impossible anywhere in the near future. The industry keeps looking for ways to convince us that car dependency can work, and that driving is a human need and a human right.

In the conclusion of this interview the Peter Norton, author of Autonorama. The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving,  says,

““How can we free ourselves from car dependency?” That doesn’t mean freeing ourselves from all cars all the time. It’s freeing ourselves from a world where if you don’t have a car you’re doomed, because you can’t get to work.

The accommodation of car dependency is the perpetuation of car dependency. That statement applies to high-tech car dependency every bit as much as it does to conventional car dependency.”

The Dangerous Promise of the Self-Driving Car

In his new book, historian Peter Norton punctures the claims of autonomous vehicle companies and warns that technology can’t cure the urban problems that cars created.

Bloomberg CityLab’s David Zipper recently spoke with the author about the allure of autonomy and the battle to break America’s car habit.

“If we could go back to the 1990s and hear Purdue Pharma talk about OxyContin solving everyone’s problems, we’d be in righteous wrath. We’ve fallen for it with opioids; we don’t have to fall for it with autonomous vehicles.”

In your book you also compare autonomous vehicle research to health research funded by tobacco companies in the 1950s. Are you suggesting that autonomous vehicle companies know that their products will damage society, but still insist on going forward?

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Although to say that the autonomous vehicle companies “know it” might be a little unfair, because they really don’t care. They’re trying to get ahead in an intensely competitive environment, and the company that cares about reality is going to be the loser, because it will limit its deployment.”

Cities Must Become Car-Free To Survive

The auto industry has co-opted our brains with snazzy advertising, unrealistic settings where drivers own the road, selling us cars with the idea that our very identity is tied to the vehicle we drive. In this car-dominated culture people defend their entitlement to drive even when the lives of vulnerable road users are at stake. Car production now outpaces population growth globally, spewing pollution, and destroying the environment and human health in general.

City streets are car sewers, but residents of cities are incensed about lack of parking, and whether bicycle riders should be permitted on sidewalks, boardwalks, or the street itself.  The small amount of space allowed for bikes (and other micro-mobility) has become the most hotly contested parts of urban infrastructure. One of the greatest successes in automotive brainwashing influence has been the antagonistic relationship of people walking against people riding bikes and scooters, taking the focus off the responsibility of drivers causing over 40 thousand deaths a year in the US alone.

We believe that in American cities, especially small cities like Asbury Park we can gradually reduce and eventually eliminate the need for personal vehicles by supporting alternative transportation options like micro-mobility (scooters, bikes, skateboards etc), and transit in the form of jitneys, pedicabs, and busses.

While we continue to build more infrastructure for people to get around without cars, we need to create more live-able spaces for people to safely gather, to play, to do business, and to move about the city.

#toomanycars #walkablecity #bikeablecity #placesforpeople

CITIES ‘MUST BECOME CAR-FREE TO SURVIVE’

JUNE 23, 2021

The researchers said future  planning must include a focus on reducing dependence on cars, promoting fewer and shorter trips and encouraging walking and cycling as primary modes of local transport. Public transport should be encouraged for longer journeys, the researchers argued, and cars should only be used for emergencies or special occasions.

Lead author Dr. Rafael Prieto Curiel commented: “The city of the future, with millions of people, cannot be constructed around cars and their expensive infrastructure. In a few decades, we will have cities with 40 or 50 million inhabitants, and these could resemble car parks with 40 or 50 million cars. The idea that we need cars comes from a very pollutant industry and very expensive marketing.”

 

Want To Learn About E-Scooters?

E-Scooters And E-Bikes – The Future Of Mobility Or Safety Risks On Wheels?

Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition stands behind efforts to reduce car dependency to promote human health, the health of our city, and the health of our planet. Most residents see the benefits of promoting micro mobility such as electric scooters, and of course they support bicycle riding to enable people to get around without cars for daily trips, and for visitors to enjoy and support businesses in our city. Sadly some others have reacted negatively on social media to the introduction of scooters in Asbury Park.  They are apparently in the thrall of auto industry influence to keep our streets flooded with cars (whether they’re gas powered, electric, or autonomous). They seem to be unable to get past the (low) incidence of crashes, they focus on “scary” encounters with scooter (and bike) riders, they neglect to acknowledge 40K deaths by car each year, and have abject fear of anything new on our streets. For historical context, here’s a fun history of cars in the early 1900’s. *

*Note that the term “accident is used throughout the article. This  journalist/historian seems to be unaware that use of “accident” was promoted by the auto industry to take the onus off drivers. “Accident” implies unavoidable. They are all crashes. #crashnotaccident.*

Read this excellent article in Forbes, and the study on e-scooters globally. This is only one of many dozens of articles in the past several years, and more during Covid, available to those who would like to learn about the future of mobility across the world. The current US administration supports building infrastructure in cities for people to get around without cars. We can build our city, Asbury Park to be resilient, healthy, and possibly car-free within the decade, but only if we have the will to do so.

For more for excellent, in-depth information, see this article from Forbes.

Excerpts:

A new report published by the International Transport Forum (ITF), a Paris-based intergovernmental organization with 60 member countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), examined how the rapid proliferation of micro-vehicles could be safely integrated into existing urban traffic patterns to help ensure that micro-vehicle riders and pedestrians would not become crash victims.

The “Safe Micromobility” report found that motor vehicles are involved in 80% of fatal crashes with e-scooters and bicycles.

The report offers ten recommendations to help policy makers, city planners, administrators, operators and manufacturers ensure the protection and well-being of all.  Read on…

 

Excerpts:

new report published by the International Transport Forum (ITF), a Paris-based intergovernmental organization with 60 member countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), examined how the rapid proliferation of micro-vehicles could be safely integrated into existing urban traffic patterns to help ensure that micro-vehicle riders and pedestrians would not become crash victims.

“Innovation in micromobility may bring new crash risks,” Alexandre Santacreu, a road safety policy analyst for the ITF and principal author of the report, said in a video statement. “But if we understand those risks, we can counter them.”

Here are some additional findings from the study:

  • E-scooter riders do not face significantly higher risk of road traffic death or injury than cyclists.
  • Traffic will be safer if e-scooter and bicycle trips replace travel by car or motorcycle.
  • The fast-paced evolution of micro-vehicles challenges governments to put in safety regulations in place that take into account the future of all mobility.

“Street design must also serve the safety of those using micro-vehicles,” Santacreu added. Making it safe creates an opportunity for “shaping a sustainable urban mobility landscape.”

Read for more in-depth information in this article from Forbes.