Motorists—car dealers and manufacturers, and associations of wealthy car owners—united as an interest group. They conducted public information campaigns, teaching people how to cross streets safely and in the process normalizing the idea that streets belonged to cars. With transcendent marketing insight, motorists realized the best way to discredit the streets-are-for-walking crowd was to make them look uncool.
Public relations and mental models aside, another problem remained: the streets themselves. In cities, they were made of dirt or gravel. That would change as a consequence of waste—but not, as one might expect, waste in the form of horse manure. Both Norton and Wells offer an alternative take on that problem, contextualizing horse dung as a relatively minor component of a much deeper waste problem. Factories and businesses disposed of wastes in local waterways or, if it was more convenient, empty lots.
People tended to live near where they worked, and they generated their own waste too. Household refuse was thrown into gutters, and human waste ended up in waterways and local cesspits. Tenements truly overflowed. Cities were, in short, hellholes. As much as they praised any automaker, urban citizens of the late 19th century celebrated sanitation engineers.
Driverless cars, currently the darling of Silicon Valley, are a cosmetic upgrade on the status quo, promoted as revolutionary, but likely changing little. To install modern sewer systems—which usually just diverted waste to local lakes and rivers and coastlines—streets were torn up. Afterward it made sense to rebuild them with asphalt, a natural form of petroleum, which inventors had learned to use as a glue to bind gravel into hard, smooth surfaces.
These were easier to clean, and also better for cars. Cars clogged the streets, slowing traffic and preventing streetcars from keeping their schedules. Ridership fell. Streetcar companies struggled to stay profitable, all the more so because, as local monopolies, city governments limited fare increases. The cost of each individual call would go way up. With a critical mass of car-service users, the cost of each trip would go way down.
If you go over, you pay a surcharge or an add-on fee. It would probably be much less. That sounds like the ultimate freedom to me. Your Life Despite the fact that manufacturers have never built better cars with more safety features, the number of automotive deaths every year continues to rise.
Because people cannot be trusted to drive safely. Also, accidents just happen, even to the best drivers. Nearly 40, Americans die every year in car crashes.
Almost two million people die worldwide. Crashes are the number one killer of Americans under the age of My teenage son drives every day, and every day I pray that he comes home to us safely. Millions of people suffer terrible injuries every year from car crashes. Often, these injuries render them unable to work, force them onto pain medication, and lead them into addiction. And yet all, if not most, of those accidents could be preventable. Everyone knows at least one person whose life has been forever ruined or distorted by a car crash.
And yet we just sit back and accept that as an inevitable fact of reality. People who passionately crusade against guns, or for universal health care, or who give thousands of dollars to cancer research just throw up their hands when it comes to cars. But there is something we can do. Get rid of cars. Your Sanity From the day you buy a car until the day you die in your car, the car business and culture abuse and exploit people.
Some mechanic has ripped you off at some point in your life. Best of all, imagine a world without car dealers, and car dealerships, the worst places staffed by the worst people alive. This will be a huge societal shift. People will lose their jobs. Essay, Pages 2 words. Don't use plagiarized sources. Get your custom essay on. Get quality help now. Verified writer. Proficient in: Car. Deadline: 10 days left.
Number of pages. Email Invalid email. Cite this page The world without cars. Related Essays. This is just a sample. You can get a custom paper by one of our expert writers. Stay Safe, Stay Original. Not Finding What You Need? Copying content is not allowed on this website.
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