Letting go of cars. You don’t have to stop loving them to stop using them.
As a young teenager who had just moved to the United States, I was eager to belong, to understand the culture, and to learn its rituals. I was with my back on the driveway and faced looking up under a 1989 Ford Bronco when I realized I was getting initiated into a quintessential American ritual. My girlfriend’s brother then asked me to help him pull out the transmission of his beloved track; the experience was both scary and empowering. As a city kid who mainly experienced life in the confines of European urban design, this kind of do-it-yourself mechanical surgery was unimaginable, not to mention that the size of that truck would be comparable to half of a public bus back home. From that day on, tinkering with cars has been something I have done, even if I am an amateur at it. I feel uneasy with the dirty and greasy metal underside of what we now think are mostly technology and electronic engineering marvels.
I have been described as a ‘car guy.” I am weak in the heart of a well-designed vintage car, whether an Alfa Romeo or a Citroen DS. But my everyday means of transportation is now two-wheeled and requires me to pedal. I can go weeks, sometimes months, without ever entering a car, no Uber, no Taxi, no private automobile. Because of it, I am healthier and happier, but still, I lust after those four-wheeled things, and I ask myself why. Today, I know that they are just not good for me or, for that matter, for any of us. The quote below best sintethized my feelings.
“Cars offer the illusion that each individual can seek his or her own benefit at the expense of everyone else.” — André Gorz
The evidence is overwhelming; recent economic research from the journal Ecological Economics reveals that the actual cost of car ownership is significantly higher than I would have imagined, with not only individual owners but society bearing a large portion of this cost. The study, which considered various factors, including initial price, maintenance, housing, and road infrastructure costs, concludes that the lifetime cost of an economy car is, on average, $689,000, with society shouldering $275,000. This number easily surpasses one million dollars with the heaviest and largest SUVs on the market. This underscores that car ownership disproportionately impacts the poor and non-car owners, who subsidize infrastructure and bear the brunt of related externalities such as congestion, pollution, and health risks, not to mention the danger they pose (particularly SUVs) to cyclists.
The realization that the very feeling of independence and self-reliance I had first experienced on that driveway, and subsequently every time I find myself fixing a car when in need, is no act of individual resilience. It’s quite the opposite. We are led to believe that cars are all about individual choice and comfort; that is how they are sold to us and how their presence is embedded in our narratives. But what we give up as cities, societies, and humans to them is much more than we can even process.
Since the beginning, cars have been sold to us for their ability to increase our social status, give us a sense of control and power, their convenience and safety, and even their sex appeal. We now have research proving that these feelings are not indicative of a broad and overwhelming reality and that cars are shaping our consciousness in ways that make us unable to see them for what they are. There is even a new term for it = “motonormativity,” referring to the cultural bias that makes people overlook the negative impacts of car use, such as emissions and traffic accidents. You can read more about it here.
At CLIP, we are fighting hard to help people shift to a different mental model, one that enables the transitions to transportation systems that are both efficient and fair, supporting the shift towards less expensive modes of transport like cycling, which can bring quick changes and offer health benefits. But our vision continues beyond the two wheels, beyond the physical realm. We need to support a new mental model, a new psychological framework. One where the car is seen for what it is, a sometimes required tool, but one that must be used with caution and as rarely as possible. One that does not have to be privately owned, one that is not an individual’s choice but one that showcases a society’s priorities and values. At CLIP, we are reframing how we interact with the bicycle, but we also hope to help you reconsider the place cars have in your life and your subconscious.
The journey is long and complicated. I will continue working on preventing my “car brain” from taking over my subconscious. I can still love cars even as I try to give them up completely.
