Who Cares About Pedestrians?

While every measure is taken to clean the roads for the drivers, look what the sidewalks are like. Of course, not only is walking out of the question (it always is, so what else is new?), but even waiting for the bus becomes a risky enterprise. You have to stand practically in the middle of the highway, praying that the speeding cars won't hit you.

And then people wonder why obesity is on the rise in a country where nobody gets a chance to walk anywhere but from their sofa to their garage. The municipal authorities don't even seem to consider the need to clean the sidewalks. Not even in places where responsible citizens who care enough about the environment not to buy a car per each family member routinely wait for public transportation.

Now I'll have to spend all day in my office with wet feet just because city officials don't consider anybody but the drivers worthy of their attention.

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Cars

I've talked before about how sad I found the Americans' complete (and often imaginary) dependence on their cars. But I keep seeing things that make me realize that the problem goes even deeper that I could have imagined. To give an example: there is a convenience store close to my house. It takes me about 4 minutes of very leisurely walking to get there. Just today I saw a young woman who lives across the street go in the direction of the convenience store. In a couple of minutes, she returned, holding a soft drink. The shocking thing is that she went there in a car. There is no logical reason why one would prefer to drive in a car that has been standing outside, in a scorching heat all day long, instead of simply walking this very insignificant distance. Are we now at the point where such a possibility doesn't even occur to young people?

I especially love it when my students tell me that they missed class because their car wouldn't start. When I inform them that there is a very good and reliable public transportation system in this area, they look at me like the idea of taking a bus is completely alien to them. And then we wonder why the obesity rates are growing and people are getting less and less healthy.

No-Driving Community

Every time I mention that I don't drive, people react as if I told them I have three heads. Especially here in the Midwest, the idea of someone living car-free shocks people profoundly. "How can you live like this?" they ask. "It must be SO hard for you." Then they start treating me like I'm an invalid beyond the hope of recovery.

So I thought that since everybody today belongs to one community or another, maybe I should start one of my own. I would call it the no-driving community. We would promote the idea that not driving is actually great.

Contrary to popular belief, living car-free solves a lot more problems than it creates. I don't care about the gas prices. I don't have to think about whether there will be a parking spot anywhere I need to go. I don't even have to know whether the street I live is one-way or two-way. I have never visited the DMV, that scary place people love to hate. I don't have to change my licence and my plates when I move. I don't have to pay for insurance or deal with the car mechanic. I don't have to pay extra for the garage. In general, living without a car saves so much time, energy, money and nerves that I have no idea why any one would ever want to have it.

It is also great for the environment. Every time I walk home from the convenience store and see my neighbors crossing the same distance in a car, I feel incredibly self-righteous and environmentally conscious.

When I moved to Southern Illinois, everybody kept repeating that I would never survive here witout a car so often that my driving-free identity had trouble surviving. And then I discovered that there is a bus that takes me from my doorstep to my office on campus and there is a very efficient cab service. And in any case, one can always revive this long-lost survival skill which is called walking.

The place that always sucks...

… can be called a number of names: BMV, DMV, or, like in Baltimore, MVA. That’s where you obtain a coveted piece of plastic to get your hands on all kinds of booze, red wines being my favorite (if under 21, you can only use it for the dull task of operating a so-called vehicle).

Naturally, great things do not come easy. Brace yourselves for an exercise in frustration ye who enter this house of misery. Today, on a heavily rainy Saturday morning, I had to make an extra trip home from Gwynn Falls MVA because the real list of required documents turned out to be different from its online version. I’m definitely getting good at it: the last encounter with Indiana’s BMV resulted in two or three extra trips, not one. Yesterday my newly acquired co-workers served me with a few similar “license & registration hunting” stories. What I can’t understand is: USA is the most driving country in the world. All the relevant procedures here must be the least painful, so why aren’t they?***

***This post is brought to you courtesy of a guest reader who wished to remain anonymous.

Driving

An utterly bizarre article has been published in Newsweek defending the Americans' right to drive cars from big bad liberals. The author attempts to argue that cars liberate us from the controlling governmental forces: "Long before climate change became another excuse for disparaging America's "automobile culture," many liberal intellectuals were bothered by the automobile. It subverted their agenda of expanding government—meaning their—supervision of other people's lives. Drivers moving around where and when they please? Without government supervision? Depriving themselves and others of communitarian moments on mass transit? No good could come of this."

How anybody can manage to convince himself that a culture where one does not even have a choice whether to learn to drive or not is liberating will always be beyond me. Somehow, this author has deluded himself into believing that a life where you absolutely HAVE to acquire one extremely expensive and dangerous metal can after another, constantly worry about gas prices, spend money on repairinng this idiotic piece of garbage, pay for insurance, waste time thinking, worrying and bothering about parking is a life of freedom.

And the funniest thing is that after producing such profoundly stupid pieces of quasi-journalism these people keep wondering why print media are about to disappear. After the news of Dowd's plagiarism and ridiculous articles like this one, I can't wait for the last print newspaper to die. People who write this stuff are either completely brainless or in the pocket of the automoile industry. No wonder that the public doesn't need their "news" and "opinions."