this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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Driving is the highest-risk activity that the average person engages in on the average day.
It's dangerous, stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. I also think it is a significant contributing factor to our sedentary lifestyles and expanding waistlines. I'm resentful that the decision to go with automobile-based infrastructure was decided before I was even born and that I've never had a viable opportunity to vote against it.
What I really hate is that driving is a privilege. But not needing to drive (i.e. walkability, bikeability, and good transit) are also privileges. Fucked either way it would seem.
There never was a vote to make it legal or illegal. And it was widely hailed as a great idea at the time. It was considered the best way for large cities to dig out from under the literal mountains of horse shit they were drowning in and that was polluting the ground water and killing children and adults alike from disease. Plus it gave people far more freedom to move about faster and father than they had by foot, horse, or train. Like it or not, the internal combustion engine has given you, personally, everything good and bad that you have at this very moment in time.
But, like most great human ideas, there are always unintended consequences no one sees until they happen.
Actually, there was a lot of push-back. People weren't too happy that suddenly great big hunks of metal were hurling through public spaces at lethal speeds -- but the car manufactures had money, so the press and the politicians sided with them.
check out Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter D. Norton
Section 1.5 and 1.6 of this article is another great write up if you can't commit to reading a book
Sure but now it is holding us back we need a nationwide high speed train network we are stuck in the 1930s while lots of other countries are in the 2030s
All of human history has been us solving problems only to create newer, bigger, more complicated problems.
I actually like driving for the most part, and I think that I'd like it even more if people who weren't forced to drive weren't driving, and if the people driving were well-trained and medically cleared as safe to drive.
If we had those things I could do a hundred miles an hour on the highway everywhere. It would be awesome.
I actually don't mind driving so much as I mind driving in heavy traffic. Driving along on an empty road, or lighter traffic at least, isn't so bad.
But society pretty much forces everyone to drive. Even people who don't want to drive or are simply bad at it.
Now imagine if everyone you met on those low-traffic days knew how to zipper merge, and were intimately familiar with the idea of "keep right, pass left." And their cars had to be maintained perfectly to even be on the road.
This training and maintenance is why some sections of the Autobahn have no speed limit.
Being a pedestrian in proximity to a driver might be riskier, unfortunately. Most driving safety standards - including vehicle and infrastructure standards too - do not adequately protect people outside of vehicles.
It's the reason I don't bike, even though distances are reasonable. I consider using an unprotected bike lane next to a busy 45mph stroad to be a matter of when (not "if") I'm involved in a collision that could cause serious injury or even a fatality. All it takes is one driver with their face in their phone.
The average person only owns a fraction of a car, but I do believe that existing on a street either inside or around cars is the highest risk an average person is being subjected to on an average day.
Keep in mind that only a small number of privileged people own a car, but everyone has to deal with them and are subjected to their risks.