Home › News ›

Does Driving 'Kill'?

Posted by: Chris Steins

13 November 2005 - 5:00am

A columnist argues that we should label automobiles with public health warnings in the same style as cigarette packets.

"...Spellbound, we embrace the great destroyer and design our lives, communities and countryside around it. We welcome cars into our lives when, rationally, we should be emblazoning them with public health warnings in the same style as cigarette packets. Driving can seriously damage your health, or Driving Kills.

...The car has not simply stumbled into its current iconic and dominant status. History's biggest red carpet has been rolled out for it. Like a spoilt young prince it was born and brought up with an economic silver spoon in its mouth. Margaret Thatcher, as prime minister when I was growing up, told us we were living in a "great car economy." Roads and car parks were built for it at public expense. Competition, like the railways and trams, had already been deliberately run down in its favour."

Full Story: Warning: Driving Kills
Source: AlterNet, November 12, 2005
»

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

all talk and --little-- action

Submitted by callum on Sun, 11/13/2005 - 16:29.

It is good to see this being bluntly published, but at the same time have we not heard this time and time again and done nothing? I'm not being pessmistic in saying that we ignore the spoken truth, but it is one thing to repeat the obvious and another to act upon it. I am not saying I also am not hypocritical at times, but I do believe I try my best to help limit my personal automobile usage, as well as those around me.

for action, check out the congestion pricing proposal in NYC

Submitted by Irvin Dawid on Mon, 11/14/2005 - 13:39.

Callum commented: "it is one thing to repeat the obvious and another to act upon it."

In reading http://www.planetizen.com/node/17977: "Could New York City Adopt London-style Congesting Pricing?", the actual article
("Driving Around Manhattan, You Pay, Under One Traffic Idea", http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/nyregion/11traffic.html)states:

"Andrew H. Darrell, the New York regional director at Environmental Defense, said that 80 percent of the cancer-causing substances inhaled by New York City residents comes from tailpipe emissions. "Most people think of traffic congestion in the same way they think about lousy weather - it's too bad but you can't do much about it," he said. "There is no other tool out there as effective as congestion pricing for cutting traffic congestion in a big city like New York."

So action is being done - in this case, at the behest of the business community (The Partnership for New York City).

But we do need to be regularly reminded of the basic ills associated with automobiles, and most importantly, driving them (a parked car is generally not lethal), as Mr.Andrew Simms does in "Warning: Driving Kills". It's these reminders that will help create the political will to do the 'politically unpopular', as Mayor Blumberg indicated the next day: "Mayor Says Traffic Fees are Not on City's Agenda" (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/nyregion/metrocampaigns/12congestion.h...)

Irvin Dawid, Palo Alto, CA

Thank you for the

Submitted by callum on Wed, 11/16/2005 - 20:44.

Thank you for the recommendation, I did read the article previous to your reply and I am quite enthused at the proposal for NY.

It's a small step to take for such an immense problem. London has been using this system for some time now, but it is only now being picked up by another large city such as NYC. At the same time, I also realize that this is due to the fact that there are conditions necessary in order to implement such a plan, such as an efficient and reliable transit system that would be able to cope with increased ridership. As a result, there are a great number of cities that are unable to even consider such a plan due to the lack of infrastructure in their transit systems at the present time. This can be improved of course, but transit systems in current urban cores have quite the hefty price tag attached to it that governments are not willing to pay. The mindset of society has to change before we can see a strong shift in the reliance on personal automobiles (of course, this is my opinion in a brief comment, feel free to refute)

Christine Allum
Toronto, Canada

Bookmark and Share
“
Every dollar spent on new and wider highways is a dollar taken from taxpayers, and every inch of right-of-way that Big Brother takes is an inch taken from landowners.
”