I read in Newsday that a woman was actually buried in her car. Her casket was placed inside her car, and car and casket were lowered into the ground. This strange story illustrates that as Americans we have become so dependent on our cars that they have become a part of us. Hopefully, none of us will be buried in our cars, but few of us can imagine a day without them. Our cars have become such an integral part of our lives that we seldom consider the possibility of reducing our dependence on them, or the costs which they impose. Those costs are both real, and avoidable.

Cars as Killers

Within the last couple of weeks a young man was killed exiting Currans Road in Middle Island. He was 20 years old. A Middle School student was also recently killed trying to cross 5 lanes of highway in Rocky Point.

Everyday people are killed or maimed on our highways. The statistics are mind numbing. In the U.S. two million people annually are involved in disabling motor vehicle accidents, and 43,000 people die on our highways. In her book, Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Kay said it this way: ³An engineer recorded it in military terms: during the same forty days of the Persian Gulf War in which 146 men and women were lost fighting to keep the world safe for petroleum, 4,900 people died with equal violence on our country's highways.² (Kay p. 103)

The fact that many of these terrible statistics are young people make them even more sobering. The automobile is the single greatest killer of young people in the U.S. Furthermore, car deaths of adolescent males in the suburbs equal gunshot deaths in the city. (Kay, p.103) So much for moving to the safe suburbs.

As Americans we have reacted to these morbid statistics by legislating safer cars. Automakers must now install air bags, antilock brakes, and of course seat belts. Unfortunately, although we have been successful in getting automakers to install all these safety devices, and to get most drivers to buckle up, the annual death rate has stayed the same.

Why? Automakers will tell you: ³Cars don't cause accidents, drivers do.² But are bad drivers really to blame? Studies clearly show that drivers respond to their environment. ³According to National Safety Council statistics, rural drivers on open roads are already involved in two and half times the fatal accidents of slower start-and stop city drivers.² (Kay p. 105) Wide straight roads encourage them to drive faster, and as the speed of cars increase, so do the number and severity of accidents.

Further, our current sprawling land use patterns not only encourage, but demand the use of the automobile. More drivers on the road, equals more accidents.

Economic Cost

Our highway engineers have reacted to the increased use of our highways by building more lanes. However, those same engineers will readily admit the futility of building more lanes to reduce traffic. in fact they have a name for it: ³generated traffic,² the congestion generated by widening roads. yet they continue to widen roads. In 1994 widening and extending roads cost Americans $6.6 billion. Add this cost to the cost of repaving our old roadways, and to reconstruction our 576,000 bridges, and the cost to our economy is truly staggering.

In economic terms we are paying dearly for our love affair with the automobile. Walter Hook of the Institute for Transportation and Development asked, ³Are bicycles making Japan more competitive?² The answer was yes. The Japanese's pay only 9% of their gross national product for transport, whereas we pay 18% to 15%..(Kay, p. 128)

The Europeans are also doing better than us, investing in more mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle friendly communities.

Environmental Costs

The cost of our cars on the environment is overwhelming. According to Kay our automobiles release more carbon monoxide, reactive hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides than any industrial source. our planet is warming, our ice caps melting, our oceans rising, and yet we refuse to admit the cause of our problems. Further, our roadways and parking lots eat up 38.4 million acres of open space. As Americans we devote more land to our cars than to our homes. than there¹s the impact of the 100 million gallons of used motor oil we dump on the ground, the oil spills, the highway salt, used tires, and on and on. our cars are an environmental nightmare, a nightmare we choose to ignore.

Solutions

The way we build our communities has forced us to become dependent on our cars. Our auto dependence results in staggering death and accident rates, and seldom considered economic and environmental costs. We have decentralized our communities. Scattering our origins and destinations and have funded the building of mile after mile of asphalt to connect them. We need to reverse this trend and to once again build centralized, pedestrian and bicycle friendly communities. Communities in which mass transit can become a viable option. We, further, need to engage in traffic calming and slow traffic down.

The solutions to the problems we face are well known. The problem is not a lack of know-how but simply a lack of will. As the story of the woman who was buried in her car illustrates we have grown attached to our cars. It is, therefore, difficult for us to admit that our auto dependence comes with a tremendous cost. If we truly wish to solve our associated health, economic, and environmental problems we need to first develop the collective will to reduce our dependence on our automobiles.

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