In America, the freedom of movement comes with an asterisk: the obligation to drive. This truism has been echoed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has pronounced car ownership a “virtual necessity.” The Court’s pronouncement is telling. Yes, in a sense, America is car-dependent by choice—but it is also car-dependent by law.
…over the course of several generations lawmakers rewrote the rules of American life to conform to the interests of Big Oil, the auto barons, and the car-loving 1 percenters of the Roaring Twenties. They gave legal force to a mind-set—let’s call it automobile supremacy—that kills 40,000 Americans a year and seriously injures more than 4 million more. Include all those harmed by emissions and climate change, and the damage is even greater. As a teenager growing up in the shadow of Detroit, I had no reason to feel this was unjust, much less encouraged by law. It is both.
It’s no secret that American public policy throughout the 20th century endorsed the car—for instance, by building a massive network of urban and interstate highways at public expense. Less well understood is how the legal framework governing American life enforces dependency on the automobile.
…American government at all levels crossed a line. Instead of merely accommodating some people’s desire to drive, our laws essentially force driving on all of us—by subsidizing it, by punishing people who don’t do it, by building a physical landscape that requires it, and by insulating reckless drivers from the consequences of their actions. To page through the law books today is to stumble again and again upon evidence of automobile supremacy.
h/ crackerbaby
The automobile is responsible for making lives substantially enriched compared to other generations before the car and trucking. This guy is a loon.
A loon maybe. For sure a nuther communist using yet another angle to destroy America by attacking an American icon while making it sound like he’s doing us a favor! Typical Leftist “justification”
“… all those harmed by emissions and climate change, and the damage is even greater.”
Dis-Ingenuate much?
The fact that the country’s too fuckin big to be accommodated by railroads (as in Europe, for instance) doesn’t enter into it?
Good catch, Crackerbaby.
izlamo delenda est …
I’ll bet the chucklehead drives 3 times as much as I do.
I hope he gets flattened by an 18 wheeler, while running a red light on his self-righteouscycle. 😡
I think the Donner Party would have welcomed roads, snowmobiles or a few 4x4s to get through the snowy Sierras.
Yeah well I really like my old truck because riding the damn horse these days just doesn’t cut it what with my aching back and arthritic hips.
I wish he would write another article to describe all those people currently being harmed by climate change. It would certainly be an interesting read, filled with all kinds of facts you just can’t find anywhere else. Well, anywhere outside of 98% of the scientific community. He needs to educate us unscientific types. I mean, you can’t just drop that claim without elaborating on it.. or maybe there’s not much to elaborate on. Hmmmm?
I think this guy would be more comfortable in the 18th or 19th century.
Just a man born out of his time.
Sounds like the entire Santa Monica City Council.
Massive construction. Road reduction. Crime train.
Unhappy residents – but the renters keep voting in the same people.
“Auto Supremacy” is attempting to flank personal liberty. The ability to travel whenever, wherever and with whomever you choose at your discretion.
The same people who now revel in the corporate fascism of a restaurant not serving Sarah Sanders, Facebook and Google banning people or popular ooinions, or banks not providing financing for companies involved in legal activities are thrilled at the prospect of taking away your right to drive away out from under their thumb.
And the first tactic of the nanny state Stalinists is to tell you its for your own good, then its good for the environment…which dovetails with Richard Attenboroughs comments yesterday about how “you can’t be radical enough” in fighting climate change.
And God said take care of the Earth too so if you don’t ban cars, you’re not a Christian. The Atheist Left being the judge of who is a Christian like they decide who isn’t a real Muslim when they commit terrorism.
IMAGINE how many babies would never have been born without a RUMBLE SEAT!
They’ll have to pry the steering wheel from my cold dead fingers if they want me to give up driving. IDIOTS! I’ve been driving for 50 years since March of 1969 and these idiots can kiss my ass. Do they even realize that no deliveries other than very local by horse or bicycle could be made within 20- 25 miles per day if they banned automobiles and trucks. It’s just another way of controlling us and turning us into Kulaks who are set for extermination because we stand in the way of their so called progressive policies. And the next thing they would ban would be horses because of all the manure littering the streets and every city stinking worse than San Francisco or Seattle, Portland etc. does. Can you imagine all that smelly, stinky horse shit on a very hot Summer day?
Soros and Strong (Maurice, thankfully deceased) were/are distressed about many things re/ the American middle class. We own guns. We eat meat. We have air conditioning. We have too much money and the things that money brings, i.e., a high degree of autonomy. We move about where and when we please, primarily via the evil automobile.
Indeed, the middle class in the USA is seen as the greatest impediment to those who would force the “new order” upon us. Be ready, shit’s about to get real.
His douche hair and progtard glasses tell me all I need to know about this guy.
I asked people what they wanted at the turn of the century and they all said, “Faster horses.”
Is that thing male?
And just how are the people that get things done going to get from jobsite to jobsite with tools and materials? Bus, horse or train?
If these lunatics got their way and banned car and air travel they still wouldn’t be happy. Next they’d be banning horse carriages due to horse farting and global warming or whatever they’d come up with.
Like all liberals he has no concept of cause and effect.
The Atlantic……..a close third behind the New Yawk Slime and the WaPo for Libtard-ness.
Wannaa-be Euro-Weenie.
Thinks Frogs are Kool, Wop fags are manly, and Kraut women make good prison guards – well – he may be right about the Kraut women …
izlamo delenda est …
I just finished reading M. R. O’Connor’s book, “Wayfinding; the science and mystery of how humans navigate the world”.
In the latter chapters the author writes about how freedom of movement has declined with each generation, and about concerns from some people that with rise in use of self driving cars – people will never learn how to drive, and will in the future be restricted to going only where the self-driving vehicles can go, which is only where three dimensional GPS maps of very high resolution have been created for them. iow – governments will control where you can go by controlling the digital maps created for the self-driving vehicles.
https://youtu.be/q2VXvcF_W1U?t=1m41s .