Think you care about sustainability? It's time to ditch the car
2,865 words on why I hate cars
I don’t drive (I can’t drive), my other half doesn’t (can’t) drive, we are a carless household. This was just down to my circumstances and the cost of car insurance for someone under 25 who lives in Birmingham (can you afford to pay £2,500 a year for insurance?) until it wasn’t. Somewhere in the midst, I became a bit of a car hater, and I think you should be too.
Now, I’m going to preface this entire piece by saying that I am healthy, able-bodied, and childless. When I have to worry about getting places the most I have to be concerned about is whether or not I need to bring an umbrella. I don’t have to think about getting sprogs to and from schools or activities (though I think lots of us grew up in carless households managed to get around fine). I also don’t live in the countryside and my nearest supermarket is within walking distance.
But as the majority of us live in urban areas and many of us are able-bodied I think this topic still applies to most of the people reading this.
(Also, a lot of this is humour and sarcasm. I don’t hate you if you drive a car. I love it when my friends pick up me out of the rain and drive me home in their nice heated box. But I do think car reliance is becoming a problem and I want to talk about it.)
What do you mean you don’t drive?
I have had more conversations than I can count where people have expressed their confusion over the fact I don’t drive. Way too many people have point-blank asked me “how do you get around if you don’t drive?” and, “on my own two feet” never seems like the right answer.
Growing up, my dad could drive but my mom couldn’t. And my dad wasn’t always the most forthcoming with lifts (sorry dad, but you’re not gonna read this). This meant I have lots of lovely memories on buses and trains with my mother, and in my teenage years, I got used to jumping on public transport and walking to the places I needed to go.
I did a handful of driving lessons at 17 or 18, as one was wont to do, but I didn’t see the point when insurance was so expensive. Then I got a big girl job, moved out and still couldn’t afford to drive. I was jealous of my friends who lived at home with their parents and didn’t have to pay rent or those who somehow had enough money to live independently and run a car at the same time. Then I got a better job and started driving lessons again, annnnnd covid hit and that wasn’t allowed anymore. Though it was also still debatable whether I could actually afford to drive.
I don’t remember what sparked it, whether it be a post-covid health kick or annoyance at the insurance companies, but I started getting interested in electric bicycles. I thought what a great way to get around (if you’ve ever ridden a bike through Birmingham; it is not a great way to get around) and the price of a bike was much less than the price of a car and all its affixing. But then, through my research, my YouTube recommendations radicalised me into a bit of a car hater, and I still stand by that title today.
The environmental impact of cars
Across the sustainability community, I’ve seen lots of people talk about how they’ve ditched flying. Instead, they get the ferry from Dover or drive onto the channel tunnel shuttle and holiday or visit conferences that way. Which is great, it’s an important endeavour, and I respect people who document their experiences travelling in this way. But then there seems to be silence when it comes to the driving part of the trip.
It’s hard to get accurate data, as they can have biases either way, but generally, cars pollute just as much as planes. One study found “the energy intensity of car transportation is on average 57% higher than air transports”, meaning that a car emits more CO2 than the average plane as they consume more energy to transport the same amount of people. Another piece found that, on average, a long car journey with 2 passengers emits a little more CO2 than if they had flown. The waters are murky as, obviously, no one is going to drive from London to Brisbane, but it can be justified for comparable distances.
So, this plane shaming we’ve been seeing all over social media (which there are a lot of nuances to, and I would love to write about this itself) might not be as valid as one thinks.
Okay, but what about the day-to-day impacts of cars? Well, there's a lot to consider.
First, we have to look at the production of cars. They consume a whole lot of energy before they even get to your driveway. The automotive industry requires mass amounts of steel, rubber, plastics, glass, and much more before the car is even created.
Then comes the fuel, which causes a problem before it even enters the car and comes out of the exhaust pipe. Petroleum extraction is not only energy-intensive, but it damages local ecosystems and communities. Shipping the fuel consumes a large amount of energy, and accidental oil spills cause environmental disasters which can take decades to clean up. Other fuels such as oil sands are one of the most destructive, carbon-intensive and toxic fuels on the planet.
As the car is driven, a whole other host of pollution occurs. Smog, carbon monoxide, and other toxins cause massive air pollution problems. And road development has a wide range of emissions and destroys wildlife. Then there are the effects of urban sprawl that are hard to quantify. The typical car emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, but this varies massively depending on car type, miles driven, fuel type, fuel economy, and so on. In fact, cars account for 60.6% of transport emissions in the EU.
Finally, the end of a car’s life, despite the fact much of the car can be recycled, plastics, toxic battery acids, and other products will still exist on this planet forever.
No, electric cars aren’t the answer
“I hear what you’re saying, but I’m one of the good drivers, I don’t have a gas-guzzling truck, I have a sleek little electric car. I’m saving the planet.”
I’ve got some bad news for you.
In general, an electric vehicle creates fewer emissions over the course of its lifetime than a car with a combustion engine. But the issue lies in the production of the electric car. “A comparative study between EVs and internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) in China . . . the pollution created through the extraction process and production of batteries remains on par or slightly higher than the manufacturing process of petrol or diesel-based engines.”
In general, despite the initial footprint, the impact of lithium-ion batteries is offset within 2 years. But then the issue is, we seem to have created a trade-in culture with our cars, where we upgrade every few years, similarly to how we do with our mobile phones. I don’t see the point of getting an electric vehicle to reduce your carbon footprint if you are just going to upgrade your car every few years, where an entirely new battery needs to be built.
Another issue with electric cars is energy production, if the car is being powered with electricity powered by burning fossil fuels, it’s still releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, just not from the exhaust pipe.
Electric cars are a step in the right direction, but even if everyone drove electric cars, there would still be plenty of emissions due to the sheer volume of cars we drive. We need to reduce the number of cars in this world and move people towards other methods of transportation.
Crappy public transport
It feels like a never-ending cycle when it comes to car reliance and public transport. You live somewhere which has bad public transport links, so you buy a car to get around. Cars rise in popularity as more places with bad transport links are built. As more and more people buy cars, fewer people get public transport. Public transport makes less money. Less public transport links are built or routes are shut down.
The UK is one of the most car-dependent countries in Europe. This is because the government has often prioritised investment into new roads and focused on ways to make driving cheaper, rather than focusing on providing good public transport services. Public transport is also massively underfunded and has been for decades. Rail fares in the UK are some of the most expensive in Europe, and bus funding had been cut by 40% in the years 2009 to 2019.
Our car reliance is also awful for kids and young people. In fact, the leading cause of death for children and young people (those aged between 5 and 29 years old) is road traffic accidents, so it’s no surprise parents don’t let their children run free, but children have lost independence and freedom because of cars.
Excuse the Daily Mail reference, but an article shares how in just four generations children have “lost the right to roam” where a great-grandad was allowed to walk 6 miles on their own at the age of eight in 1919, a grandad to walk 1 mile in 1950, a mother half a mile in 1979, and the son who just turned eight, is only allowed to walk to the end of the street on his own, which is just 300 yards away. How can we expect the next generation to care about the environment when they weren’t even allowed to explore green spaces on their own?
Cars, are like, really unsafe
This one’s a bit of a personal gripe but I’ve got a point, I promise.
I used to think that I was just a bit stupid and unaware of my surroundings, or just unlucky, but I realise I’m not the problem, the drivers are the problem. The number of times cars have reversed into me out of their drives as I walk down the pavement, or they’ve sped through the zebra crossing as I step out into the road, or, and I’ve been told this is quite a Birmingham-specific problem, cars simply speeding through red lights when I try to cross the road. It’s almost as if being in an almost 2-tonne metal box makes you a little bit careless.
The thing is, cars are getting bigger, a lot bigger. And this isn’t only a problem for our roads, it's a problem for people, too. Bigger vehicles, like SUVs and pickup trucks, are much more likely to hit people than other cars. In the USA, pedestrian deaths have reached their highest level in 40 years. These cars are so big, that the drivers often can’t see the people they’re about to hit. NBC news found it took “at least nine elementary school children sitting in a line for someone in the driver’s seat of four different SUVs and pickup trucks to see the top of a single child’s head”.
Advertising has also sold drivers a false sense of safety with SUVs. The perception of risk is really important when it comes to car safety. Take, for example, how death rates among car drivers went down once seat belts became mandatory, but then death rates among pedestrians and cyclists went up because, presumably, the drivers felt safer and therefore took more risks. A similar thing is happening with big cars. In an SUV, the “car cushion” effect makes you feel safer, regardless of whether you actually are, and in turn, harms pedestrians.
Advertising and cars
As with every product on this god-forsaken earth, advertising has skewed our perceptions and pressured us into buying something because of the image it will give us. With (big) cars, that is the sense of superiority.
Manufacturers have actually shifted away from selling family cars, instead focusing on bigger (and more polluting) SUVs, and the drive to persuade us to buy these vehicles has been very effective.
Jeep’s Cherokee SUV was made for men who “wanted something to make him feel a bit younger and carefree”. Their marketing catered towards men in a midlife crisis who thought the SUV could give them the rugged image they were looking for, even though they never actually needed the off-road 4 by 4 capabilities it was built with. This happened with other cars, too. The Chevrolet Blazer provided “a little bit of security in an insecure world”, and a top motor designer once said, “SUV buyers want to be able to take on street gangs with their vehicles and run them down”.
In the 70s and 80s, range rover also led with advertisements such as “In a country that has 184 rainy days, 51 freezing days and 25 foggy days every year, no car can ever be too safe”, and “‘There’s only one car for the double-barrelled” making it the perfect car for the posh and armed. Then there was the Ford Explorer, which was driven through a huge plate glass window at the Detroit auto show at its launch. It was made explicitly clear that SUVs were the perfect man vehicle and an essential part of day-to-day life.
There also seems to be a cultural distaste for public transport, and by extension, those who don’t drive. I remember watching a Victorious episode surrounded around the fact the main character was 16 and still didn’t have her driving licence *gasp*. Then there’s the “bus wankers” joke from the Inbetweeners that has hung around for over a decade now. Personally, a lot of my friends and family rag on me for not driving, and the inconvenience it causes them.
What's the answer?
If you are lucky enough to live in a place where public transport is possible, you should opt for it because, in all honesty, it’s not that bad. That is, if you just slightly change your mindset.
Humans are pretty impatient, and we’re becoming more impatient than ever before. We have a “want it now” attitude and expect things to fall into our hands when we want them. We want to get to where we’re going, in the quickest way possible, in the most comfortable way, without any delays or negative impacts on us. But sometimes we just have to do the less selfish thing for the greater good.
I feel like this applies to a lot of things when it comes to sustainability and environmental choices. I’m not vegan because I love the taste of fake meat (though I do) or because I hate cheese, I am vegan for ethical reasons and because it’s better for the environment. I don’t avoid single-use plastics for fun, I do it because plastic is filling our oceans. I don’t get public transport because I love waiting for and sitting on a train, I do it because, you guessed it, it’s better for the environment.
We also need to build more public transport-friendly and walkable cities, something that is entirely possible. Take the Netherlands for example, it’s the bike capital of the world, but it hasn’t always been. It was a very car-dependent city in the 1960s and 70s, but when car-free Sundays were introduced due to the 1973 oil crisis, noise pollution was reduced and children could play on deserted motorways, citizens were reminded of what life was like before the car, and they quite liked it. One city, Delft, crafted a whole network of cycle paths, and then other cities followed suit. Now the Netherlands is an incredible bike and public transport-friendly city, and its citizens–and carbon footprint–are better for it. Hopefully, as the concept of the 15-minute city rises in popularity, other places will make similar changes.
There is also the concept of the library economy when it comes to cars (something I’ve written about before). Cars come in handy when we want to get to remote areas or transport stuff, so being able to borrow one for the week without the eye-watering rental costs could reduce massively reliance on cars.
We all need to make a conscious effort to reduce our car reliance in our day-to-day lives. Could you catch the bus for work a couple of days a week? Could you walk your kids to school on certain days? Could you get a train on your next trip rather than drive? Try it out a few times and it might become your new normal.
While I understand that everyone's circumstances are different, we really must also consider the effects cars are not only having on our environment but on our quality of life. I stand by my title as a car hater and encourage others to think critically about their transportation choices.
Inspiration and references
https://youmatter.world/en/plane-or-cars-which-means-of-transport-pollutes-the-most/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact