So much anarchy in auto-America, so little time. I know, I know, the politicians keep saying there’s a “war on cars’ but it’s mostly the people outside cars that keep getting maimed and killed.
So here’s what’s new in auto-American mayhem.
The ‘war on cars’ rages on
Listen, there absolutely positively a war on cars raging in America. It’s clear that radicals want to ban cars everywhere all the time.
Fortunately there is a counter-insurgency working on behalf of besieged motorists everywhere. Which is why Republicans in the U.S. House want to to block radical Washington D.C. from banning right turns on red lights and using speed enforcement cameras.
As Politico notes: On the right, for more than a decade, there’s been a refrain about the “war on cars” right alongside the war on Christmas. “There is a loud constituency that does not want you to drive your car,” said Jay Beeber, executive director for policy at the National Motorists Association, which has championed the measures dictating Washington policy. “A lot of this is virtue signaling.”
And never mind that right turn on red laws very often kill pedestrians.
As Sam Schwartz, former New York City traffic commissioner, told Politico:
“Just about every study that I’ve seen shows that [right turn on red] increases crashes. Right now we’re seeing this surge in pedestrian crashes. It is often pedestrians and bicyclists who get caught in the crosswalk.
But when you think of it, dead pedestrians are a cheap price to pay to defend the autoAmerican Way Of Life.
Fast, reckless and stupid
How fast are those Georgia Bulldogs. Plenty fast.
Not to mention reckless and stupid.
The recent arrest of UGA cornerback Daniel Harris for reckless driving (reportedly going well over 100-mph) was just the latest in a depressingly long series that might as well be titled “Bulldogs On Speed.”
“This marks the 25th time a Georgia player has been arrested or cited with a driving-related incident since January 2023 when offensive lineman Devin Willock and staffer Chandler LeCroy died in a car crash,” reports Athlonsports.com.
And, listen, if former Gator Trevor Etienne didn’t like the, um, GNV “culture,” he’s settled into to the UGA way in true Road Runner fashion. Etienne had barely exited the portal in Athens when he was picked up and charged with drunken driving.
Naturally UGA coach Kirby Smart has been quick to crack down: “The number one thing (is) I’m disappointed. Anytime you have a situation like that you want your players to make better decisions.”
Wow, great locker room pep talk Coach!
Safety delayed is safety denied
The National, Highway Traffic Safety Administration has for decades been mandating design standards and enacting regulations aimed at keeping people inside cars safe. It is only now, almost as an afterthought, that the agency is getting around to proposing rules to help keep pedestrians and cyclists – people outside cars in other words – from getting mowed down by the the safe people inside cars.
It is no coincidence that the proposed rules come along as pickup trucks and SUVs are getting bigger, heavier and more deadly to pedestrians. As Streetsblog notes:
Study after study after study has revealed that the high hood styles of today’s SUVs and pickup trucks — which are far bigger and heavier than earlier models — are a major factor in pedestrian deaths.
And this from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
“Manufacturers can make vehicles less dangerous to pedestrians by lowering the front end of the hood and angling the grille and hood to create a sloped profile. There’s no functional benefit to these massive, blocky fronts.”
Maybe not, but they sure look cool, which is what drives sales. What autoAmerican dude wants to buy a low-rider pickup?
The Gas Bag on high test
Listen, I know everybody’s on Trump’s back because of his sometimes incomprehensible word salads. But I gotta hand it to him. I’ve never heard anybody express the esssence of The autoAmerican Way quite as, um, clearly as our Trump.
Seriously, you gotta give this a read. And then start your engine and do a little running at the mouth yourself.
China is going to take over all of your business because of the electric car and because they have the material. We don’t.
What we have is a thing called the gasoline. We have gasoline. We have so much gasoline, we don’t know what to do. They don’t have gasoline. So why are we making a product that they dominate?
I always say I love the electric car, but they don’t go far enough and they don’t do well. You know, in Iowa, it was 20 degrees below zero. When we had our great success in Iowa, we had a great and there were cars all over the place. I said, what’s wrong with those cars? They don’t work well in cold and they don’t work very well in heat.
But Elon’s going to figure it out because he’s great. He gave me the greatest endorsement. He figures everything and. And right now he’s got he’s got other things. I think he’s got to get a rocket up to get those two people out of there.
I’m in awe. In awe I tell ya.
autoAmerican anarchy in one frame
The GNV owner of this pickup-the-size-of-Texas has “Don’t tread on me” emblazoned on the front and a handicapped parking permit. Unfortunately, all the handicapped spaces were taken so said entitled owner parked in a painted off space clearly not intended for parking.
Which is fine…so long as some poor soul in a wheelchair doesn’t show up to discover that a Texas sized pickup is blocking the access ramp.
auto-American anarchy in another frame
Talk about a two-fer: This local business has thoughtfully provided a wheelchair access ramp smack dab in front of where all the cars pull up to place their orders. What could possibly go wrong?
When they finally take notice
Getting killed in traffic is the most anonymous form of death in autoAmerica. The typical news report about a traffic fatality runs about three sentences and almost never includes the name of the dearly departed or that of the offending driver.
That all changes, of course, when someone famous gets run down.
It was major news when professional hockey brothers John and Matty Gaudreau were killed while riding their bikes the night before their sister’s wedding in New Jersey.
“You keep asking yourself: ‘Why? Why did this have to happen?’” Jerry York, who coached the brothers at Boston College, told the New York Times. “There are no good answers.”
Actually there are. And more than one.
The immediate answer, of course, was that the motorist who killed the brothers was apparently driving under the influence. Which explains why it was a relatively short lived story. Dead brothers. Drunk driver. Case closed.
But maybe, just maybe, the news media simply missed the “rest of the story.”
In a posting appropriately titled “What the Media is Getting Wrong About the Gaudreau Brothers’ Deaths,” Streetsblog writer Kea Wilson points out that “despite the astonished headlines, the kind of crash that killed the Gaudreau brothers has become all too common on U.S. roads. Nearly 41,000 people were killed in car crash deaths last year alone, a rate which ranks America among the most dangerous of all developed nations for per-capita roadway fatalities.
Advocates say those crashes, in particular, tend to share a few disturbingly predictable characteristics. Much like the Gaudreaus, most cyclists are killed on roads with no protected bikeways and high speed limits that virtually guarantee any collision will be lethal; when cyclists are killed after dark, as the brother were, those roads often don’t have adequate streetlights, much like the road on which they died.
Many crashes involve increasingly large SUVs like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which countless studies show are statistically more likely to kill people on two wheels. Almost none of those cars comes equipped with the kind of impaired driving prevention technology that could passively detect and stop a drunk driver from even starting his car, despite a congressional mandate to soon require them on all new vehicles.
And while the person behind the wheel certainly should be held accountable, many advocates argue those who have stalled on implementing life-saving policy changes should be held accountable, too.
The war is really real
And finally, I cannot in good conscience end this edition of autoAmerican Anarchy without providing one more tangible piece of evidence – not that it’s needed – that there really is a war on cars raging in autoAmerica.
Take it from Anna Zivarts, war on cars co-conspirator and author of the radical manifesto: When Driving is not an option.
In her own words
Making roads safer for people outside of vehicles necessitates making vehicles go slower. Cars kill because they are heavy and fast, and even the slightest mistake can have horrific outcomes. At slower speeds, they are less lethal, and at slower speeds, the time savings of car travel over other modes decreases.
We need to build communities where more people can travel by car less far, less fast, less often. When it is necessary to travel farther, we need to make driving a less convenient option than riding public transit.
They want us to slow down, autoAmericans. Be afraid. Be very afraid!
FreeGNV 