Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment
sciencedirect.com16 points by throw0101c 4 hours ago
16 points by throw0101c 4 hours ago
arguments along these lines are false, unless they include fully worked out implimentable alternatives, which is rare. Personaly I am a commited "enviromentalist", greeny, nature boy, whatever, and have gone deep and wide only to find a huge amount of finger pointing, wouldn't it be niceism, political leveraging, etc, etc, and very very little pragmatism and civil engineering.
The use of “justice” oriented activist language is a giveaway for this being an unserious paper. Even without that, it’s obviously one sided since it doesn’t consider the tradeoff. Cars also provide huge benefits to individuals and the economy. It’s worth it, which is why they’re popular.
From the paper: "Crashes kill 1.3 million people per year including 700 children per day." I have always thought it's striking that people drive so much in spite of knowing that each time you could easily kill or be killed. Imagine if phones were equally dangerous - who'd carry one in their pocket?
Obviously cars are useful, but we've built our cities to maximize that (and we still spend a lot of time stuck in traffic, even so). That doesn't mean that there aren't more useful possibilities, just that the inertia in the system makes them seem like a dream.
It’s not just “us” who built cities to maximize car travel. Everyone did it. Walkable european cities are surrounded by car-dependent suburbs.
The problem with your analysis is that your concept of “useful” is based on a set of priorities in your head that’s almost certainly not shared by the people who prefer to live in car-optimized areas. Cars let you travel in private, on your own schedule, without having to interact with other people. You might not value those things. Lots of people do.
I'm not convinced that suburbs outside the US are quite as hard to walk in as in the US.
Just about every UK suburb is walkable to train station a supermarket some smaller shops and probably a pub somewhere.
I the US the sidewalk just ends and walking can be quite dangerous in places.
They define the negative consequences for justice as “unequal distribution of harm, inaccessibility, and consumption of space, time, and resources” Which fits with my understanding.