> Why are we devoting so much energy to making people unhappy? Few things in life make me less happy than the externalities of car culture. It fosters among ot

> Why are we devoting so much energy to making people unhappy? Few things in life make me less happy than the externalities of car culture. It fosters among other things: 1) Disconnection from one's community and the natural environment 2) Noise and air pollution imposed on one's neighbors without their consent 3) Worse collective physical health due to replacing walking trips with car trips 4) Excess consumption of all goods, including fossil fuels 5) Risk of serious injury or death for both drivers and pedestrians 6) High stress due to the inevitable presence of traffic 7) Environmental degradation and expansion of the urban/wilderness frontier 8) Repressive political regimes propped up by oil exports Of course there are positives to cars too but many of the positives only exist due to the problems that the widespread deployment of private cars caused in the first place. We need cars to visit our friends and family or go to work because we constructed a society in which we don't actually live in the same communities as our friends, families and employers because the car allowed us to. We buy things that we don't need because the car allows us. Consumerism fills the void of meaning in our lives that is in no small part due to the disconnection that the car created in the first place. Personally, although driving a car can be great fun under the right circumstance, I find most of the time it is either tedious or stressful. I would almost always rather be walking, which engages my body and allows my mind to wander without fear that I might seriously injure, or even kill, someone in a moment of inattention. At the same time, whatever mode of transportation I am using: car, biking or walking, I know that I am at risk of being hurt by an inattentive or reckless motorist, of which there are many. I am making a distinction between private vehicles and vehicles in general. Obviously we need some vehicles to move crucial goods and people with limited mobility. And to occasionally make long journeys. Since the pandemic began, I have been only been in a car about a half a dozen times and I have experienced no material deprivation whatsoever. Of course I have been reliant on trucks delivering groceries to my local stores and the occasional home delivery (which again does not require a private vehicle). Your fear does make me optimistic though. It suggests that people are waking up to the catastrophe that widespread deployment of private cars has had on human life.