Why I hate cars and car culture

I hold some beliefs and interests that many would consider unusual. I am an anarchist¹, an anti-natalist², and I also happen to hate cars and car culture. That’s what this note is about.

I have always hated looking at cars. It is just not my aesthetic. Give me a tree to look at, and I am a happy person, I feel at peace. Give me a car and it just looks like hell to me. I bet hell looks like the modern american city. Cars and car culture have many, many disadvantages. Here are a few:

Cities paved for parking

American cities have an average of 2.5 to 7 (!) parking spaces per car. Europe is much lower than that, around 1 to 1.3. It makes sense to have more than 1 parking space per car, since, when travelling, you need parking space at both end-points. When a car isn’t parked there, that space is just dead, grey asphalt. Asphalt has a high environmental impact: It absorbs heat and contributes to the urban heat island effect.

So much (wasted) space for roads

Roads are also another waste of space. With an increase in the number of cars, the road area also expectedly needs to increase. This could mean either more individual roads or just making the ones we have even wider. More road area means more asphalt, which means a larger environmental impact. The space we use for roads is space that cannot be used for better things, such as housing, nature, forestry, gardening, community building, etc. Places where people can actually live and gather.

Just think of the uses we could be putting into car-related space.

Environmental impact

Guess what? Car culture is an environmental disaster. I have already mentioned asphalt. There are also the greenhouse gas emissions, land use and urban sprawl, vehicle manufacturing, microplastics and wildlife fragmentation.

Transportation accounts for around 1/4 (25%) of the global CO₂ emissions³. They also emit nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulate matter (microplastics!). We are in a climate emergency, and an increase in the number of cars exacerbates that.

Land use and urban sprawl are another problem. An increase in the land paved equals a decrease in green space and biodiversity. It destroys habitats. Car culture leads to sprawl, that is, low density and spread-out cities, which forces people to drive longer distances. The sense of community erodes. In my opinion, the loss of walkable cities might be one of the most infuriating aspects of car culture.

On the manufacturing aspect, producing a car uses vast resources, namely steel, aluminium, cobalt, lithium, rare earths. Oh, and it emits greenhouse gases.

Noise

Cars are noisy. There is the noise of the combustion engine, there is the noise created by the friction of the tires on pavement and there is the wind-resistance noise. They are noisy. Noise is a form of pollution. The constant low-level noise is linked to stress, sleep issues, cognitive decline and wildlife disruption. Try living near a road and keep your window opened. You will notice how much worse you feel within a day.

Road traffic is the main source of noise pollution.⁴

Social Isolation

People are lonelier than ever⁵. We should be moving towards a more social lifestyle, one with a bigger sense of community. Car culture increases social isolation. Less walkable communities and larger car culture means more time spent on individual vehicles. It means less time for community building, for building relationships or just being around others.

Final Thoughts

I left out quite a few things such as safety risks (check out the number of car-related deaths!⁶), road rage and high costs of ownership. I also did not mention that car culture increases inequality. People who can’t drive (either for economic, health, or personal reasons) are at a disadvantage since a car is almost mandatory in a car-centric society.

When I think of a utopia, cars are not part of it.

Whenever I see a car parked on a pedestrian zone, I get infuriated. We have already surrendered so much space to cars, and yet, one still feels the need to take even more space? Parking in a way that makes the use of wheelchairs or strollers impossible just makes me furious. It just shows how egocentric and egotistical people are and how broken our priorities are.

What is the alternative? Public transit. Walkable cities. Bike-friendly cities. More trees. More shade⁷. Cities designed for people, not machines.

I will finish this note with an illustration of the car culture made by Karl Jilg for the Swedish Road Administration.

I fucking hate cars.