Communique #2 Driven to distraction: The spectacular allure of cars

We have created a society in which the car is essential because of, among other things, more people working far from where they live, facilities being centralised away from the community they serve, children not necessarily going to the school nearest them, fear of crime and of other people, and sheer idleness. Cars have become a necessity of life – most people simply cannot imagine life without one. In the past, the basics for survival were food, water and shelter … now they also include a car, a big TV, a smart phone, a conservatory and many other items that we really could do without.

 Cars become one of the family, like a pet. People work hard to continually trade up until they find the perfect car. They become a status symbol. Those who do not have a car crave them. The car is the perfect commodity fetish. The car is an absurdity.

The ubiquitous influence of automobiles means that their existence is rarely questioned, let alone challenged, rather like religious doctrine within the church. An anarchist society could be created without privately owned cars; in fact, I would suggest that it could be positively desirable to have communities where people live and work within walking distance of home, or use communal public transport if they need to travel further.

 The number of deaths in car accidents is at the lowest level since records began in 1926, due largely to safer manufacture, better driving, clampdowns on drink driving and safer roads. 1,713 people lost their lives in car accidents, which is almost half the number in 2000 when 3,409 died. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-road-fatalities. Of course, this is not much consolation if a friend or family lost their life, or was injured, in a car crash. This in no way detracts from the spectacular nature of the automobile industry, from the advertising to the alienation.

If you don’t own a car or drive, people look at you as if you must be really very poor, too stupid to operate a car or a Luddite. While these assumptions may very well be true in my case, they are indicative of how ingrained car ownership has become in our collective psyche. I am sometimes a grateful passenger in a car, but would rather that the lift was not needed in the first place.

The ironic thing is that public transport has rarely been so clean or safe. It is accused of being expensive, but how expensive is owning a car (tax, petrol, insurance, maintenance, MOT, parking etc.). For regular users of public transport there are always cheaper weekly, monthly or annual passes that bring the cost down. Public transport removes the need for a lot of car ownership.

There may be a place for some community owned cars, so that doctors and other essential services can directly get to where they are needed. If there was a society where most people walked or used community public transport, there would be no traffic jams and the public transport would be faster than current cars. Technology would ensure that public transport was fast, safe and reliable, with services when and where required.

At present, if you want to cycle, then roads are dangerous places. As people don’t need to do a test to ride a bike on a road, cyclists often become a hazard for all users. The chaos of roads leads some to cycle on paths which is ludicrous and endangers pedestrians. People who actually want to walk anywhere have other obstacles, such as poorly maintained footpaths and even no footpath at all in a lot of rural places. By freeing the roads of privately owned cars, cycling would be a desirable form of transport and the roads would not need to be so intrusive on our everyday lives.

Driving a car on a commute requires constant attention, whereas the person using public transport can just look out of the window, read, do work or actually interact with other human beings! It would be interesting to know how many of those people who scoff at the very notion of public transport actually use it.

It is the alienation caused by cars that I find the biggest criticism – people often never talk to their neighbours as they step out of their front door and get into the car to do everything. If you walk past a row of cars on the road, just look at the isolated faces trapped in the steel, plastic and rubber. Some people look like zombies who have had all the life drained from them, while others seem to think no-one can see them and treat the car as a room in their house! Home to Car to Work to Home to Shops to Home. Our cities have simply become car after car after car.

The demand for more and more roads to facilitate car use has destroyed many of our communities. Roads cut swathes through our towns and countryside, with rarely a whimper of questioning. Our communities have been criss-crossed and divided by roads, making it harder for people to interact except by car.

Also, the building of roads needs vast amounts of resources, from building materials to policing and technology, to keep the traffic flowing. And yet, one accident and the whole thing grinds to a standstill.

In the 1980s there was concern about the pollution caused by cars. While the pollution caused by driving one particular car may have been reduced by better manufacture, tighter environmental legislation and less harmful fuel – the key word is “reduced”. Of course, as living standards rise around the world, more and more cars are being produced and driven. It is harder to find anywhere where you cannot hear cars, however quiet they are supposed to have individually become. Even the Department for Transport website states:  
“Climate Change is recognised as one of the greatest environmental threats facing the World today and it has long been appreciated by governments that reducing the impact of the motor vehicle has an important part to play in addressing this threat.” http://www.dft.gov.uk/vca/fcb/index.asp

Of course, there is also environmental damage in providing the resources to manufacture cars, plus shipping them around the world and producing more roads. The new UK government are sceptical, at best, about anything to do with the environment. Car emissions still cause pollution and cars create noise. There is also a never ending and often caustic demand for parking; streets which are publicly owned are lined with these metallic nuisances.

Also, cars make us apathetic and lazy. We will not use local shops because it is easier to go to the supermarket in the car; we won’t use public transport because it is easier to get in a car and drive there; we have no consideration about anyone else because when we get in our car we are cocooned from the rest of the world. Road rage is merely the tip of the selfishness that cars imbue.

Government is essential for car domination. Without the myriad of legislation and taxation/expenditure, the road network would collapse and driving would become chaotic. Does anyone seriously believe that people would not drink and drive if they didn’t have to; or speed, or park anywhere, or drive without insurance, or stop when they had an accident?

Car manufacturers are among the leading global multinationals; they do not want to dominate the market, they want to dominate the world. They strive to be beyond government with a Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) / Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that frees them of shackles of any regulation, accountability or responsibility.

Car advertising has always been at the forefront of spectacular advertising. If something needs advertising it is because it isn’t really needed and you have to be persuaded of its value to you. Since 1945, this persuasion has always been a lifestyle choice because there could easily be one standard design that would be safe, reliable and affordable … but that is not how capitalism works. The central idea is to sell a product that will fit in with YOUR lifestyle, even if basically all cars do exactly the same thing, and look similar. This is why it is unusual for celebrities to advertise cars, because then you would associate the product with them, rather than with you.

The car industry, with its entourage of prostitutes, is still a male dominated sector; even the cars are masculine in their harsh metal make-up. The need for speed, and the analogies with sex and sexuality, have often been remarked on. 

Today, the advertising is more subtle, but this is made up for by the mind boggling array of accessories that can be bought for a car! The irony is that most cars are almost the same as each other, but personalising and accessorising seem ways to overcome this basic problem – they do not, and merely consolidate the spectacular allure and the need for further consumption. More depressing still is the glamour that is associated with fast and expensive cars; this mystique is a varnish put on by spectacular society to make us desire the unnecessary and believe that we must all strive to achieve such glamorous ideals.

We must be able to safely walk around our communities to understand the environment we live in. Cars have dictated how our villages, towns and cities operate. It would be so much better to have a community that is developed around human needs and those of the wider environment, including the natural world. Psychogeographical exploration of our cities is a part of this understanding, but this has become sanitised by the access for cars and technology that just shows us where everything is without the need for the vital process of self-discovery.

There is an alternative to private car ownership, but it is not in the interests of those who control our lives to even acknowledge this. Cars are not sexy - they are ugly, dirty, noisy, anti-social, polluting emblems of a selfish, greedy and ego-maniacal society that denies real community. And yet, it is not the car itself that is the biggest problem, it is the impact on our everyday lives. I don’t hate cars so much as what they represent. We can dream of a better society of individuals, in harmony with nature, working together to build a cleaner, better and more exciting world without cars.