By Sheldon Greaves
It is one of the most persistent, thoroughgoing myths in American society; Americans love their cars. It’s a deep, long-lived, and more or less wholesome romance that defines America from the suburbs to the family road trip to monster truck rallies. Mention the accomplishments of American industry, and Henry Ford’s mass-produced automobiles is likely to top the list. Yes, Americans love their cars, and always have. Not liking cars is almost unpatriotic.
The current mythology obscures a larger story of one of the most successful public persuasion campaigns in the history of mass marketing. Washington Post reporter Emily Badger wrote a fascinating piece in 2015 that only just came to my attention. It concerns the work of historian Peter Norton at the University of Virginia, author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. The book describes the lost history of how we came to “love our cars.” It’s a history we need to revisit as we get closer to driverless cars, and confront the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, most of which comes from cars.
A Toxic Love Affair
Norton explains that the “love affair” was not an idly chosen metaphor. “It’s one of the biggest public relations coups of all time. It’s always treated as folk wisdom, as an organic growth from society… One of the signs of its success is that everyone forgets it was invented as a public relations campaign.”
A weekly television program called the DuPont Show of the Week featured an episode called “Merrily We Roll Along” (link is to Part 1 only) which first introduced the “love affair” language. None other than Groucho Marx recounted the tale of a (male) driver and a (female) car that found each other, fell in love (so to speak), and got married as a result of their “burning love affair.” Everyone loves a lover, I suppose, and besides, one cannot challenge love with logic.
But that’s only part of the story. When the show aired (1961) cars were facing stiff criticism. The new interstate system was disrupting or destroying many old neighborhoods. Interstate 95 would raze entire black neighborhoods in Miami. Grassroots groups formed to fight back. New York’s Washington Square and Greenwich Village would have been paved over but for a successful campaign led by urbanist hero Jane Jacobs. In the end, however, the PR campaign won out, and American cities were re-made to accommodate automobiles. The process continues to this day. Incidentally, I am told by a retired professor of civil engineering that each car requires 3,000 square feet of paved infrastructure.
Additionally, Norton observes that the usual rejoinder to this history, and the current consequences, is that people voted with their pocketbooks, that it’s all about preferences. People chose to live in the suburbs, which were designed to require cars. In other words, “choice” is illusory. He quips:
“If you locked me in a 7-Eleven for a week, and then after the end of the week unlocked the door and you studied my diet over the previous seven days, then concluded that I prefer highly processed, packaged foods to fresh fruits and vegetables, I would say your study is flawed.”
Choice or Addiction?
But consider this new wrinkle in the car debate: a 2011 article from the Oxford Journal of Public Health, with the provocative title, “Are Cars the New Tobacco?” Their answer is, “yes.” From the abstract:
Private cars cause significant health harm. The impacts include physical inactivity, obesity, death and injury from crashes, cardio-respiratory disease from air pollution, noise, community severance and climate change. The car lobby resists measures that would restrict car use, using tactics similar to the tobacco industry. Decisions about location and design of neighbourhoods have created environments that reinforce and reflect car dependence. (Emphasis added)
Incidentally, note the use of the phrase, “car dependence.” The abstract concludes:
Car dependence is a potent example of an issue that ecological public health should address. The public health community should advocate strongly for effective policies that reduce car use and increase active travel.
Given the way cars have been carefully and purposely build into our society and culture, and the health effects, it’s hard to argue that we would be better off if we walked more. Global warming might force the issue, assuming it isn’t too hot to go outside.
Further, driverless cars are being touted as a solution to the problem of automobile congestion, but even a moment’s thought will show that this will lead to more cars on the road, not fewer. Moreover, driverless cars represent a cybersecurity nightmare (to be discussed later).
On a personal note, nearby Corvallis, Oregon, generally seen as a bastion of liberal sensibilities is simultaneously bragging about their success in reducing greenhouse emissions (a claim disputed by state studies), and looking to add roughly $1 billion in fossil fuel-related infrastructure. Yes, those are diametrically irreconcilable objectives, but try telling that to the local land use committee.