Car Culture Was a Deadly Mistake

Imagine we could go back in time to the moment before American society became deeply obsessed with cars. Reports by public authorities estimate that over 3 million Americans have died in motor vehicle incidents since the year 1900. The global death toll is much larger, placing car-related death in the same order of magnitude as the worst genocides of the twentieth century. Who would have thought that adopting a new technology would be so deadly? Do you think anything would have changed if we had known back then, what we know now?

Maybe you're asking yourself if we had an alternative, and we did. In the nineteenth century, the United States was already by and large a train-oriented society. Passenger railroads connected every major city, most of which were served by a centrally-located train station. By 1895, the US had 900 electrified transit systems in operation. Streetcars abounded, ferrying commuters across downtowns and nearby suburbs. How would things have played out, had America nourished this infrastructure instead of throwing it away? Trains are way safer than cars. Today, road fatality in the U.S. remains unacceptably high, topping 42,000 deaths in 2022. Compare that to Europe, a region comparable to the U.S. in size and population, where the number of people who lost their lives in accidents involving trains in motion was estimated at 808 for the same year.

My intention here is to help you appreciate the cost of a technological choice made by American society a long time ago, a decision which brought with it tragic outcomes. The consequences of mass adopting cars as our go-to transportation method was not properly questioned. We didn't even hesitate as the data and evidence of the carnage started flowing in. Worse yet, we doubled-down, shifting public investment towards urban highways while tearing down train stations and public transit. A full 100 years after the introduction of the automobile, America is still reckoning with its repercussions. Cars altered our cities in a way that is hard to reverse, creating a new urban reality that our society has not finished adapting to. and normalizing a litany of consequences – accidents, noise, pollution, traffic – that have become entrenched as chronic everyday ills.

The question remains... Could we have done anything differently? How would life in America be today had we mustered sufficient skepticism towards car technology? Our society is as cautious as it is adventurous... how come we didn't hedge our bets by keeping our options open? Certainly, the investment needed to develop and maintain functional passenger rail and public transit is monumental, but how much is a human life worth? The automobile revolution may have saved us millions of dollars but has cost us millions of innocent lives. Has it been a worthy sacrifice? If your answer is yes — that sometimes a life sacrifice must be made in the name of progress — then I invite you to consider how different is that from the human sacrifices of antiquity, so often considered an abomination by proponents of western-style development. Blood spilled on the road, not on the altar.

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. — Roy Amara

The automobile, one of the greatest technological revolutions of the twentieth century, turned out to be a bad bet... What will be the next big technology to sour on us? As our technological revolution accelerates, there is no shortage of new technologies promising to transform the world. The Internet (1995), Social Media (2000s), now Artificial Intelligence (2020s) — every time a new technology is released to the public, the financial interests behind it push for the widest possible adoption to boost profitability. The financial incentives are such that they are tempted to disregard the negative cultural potential of the technologies they introduce.

Can we expect making real progress if we keep developing technology that creates as many problems as it solves? The number of ways in which a technology can produce unwanted outcomes is a much ignored metric... Have you wondered if there are more ways in which AI can be misused at the expense of others than fields in which it can be applied gainfully to the benefit of all? As a world-leading society, we Americans should have clarity about how are we asking these questions, how do we answer them honestly, and how do we give force to our conclusions. That is why Criticism and Ethics of Technology is becoming an increasingly important field (it has always been). To establish a philosophy of technology and culture that benefits everyone and protects everyone from unintended consequences. Some rules of the game to govern the systems that make our world go round.

⚭ Topic Nexus

• What is Human Culture?

• What is Technology?

• What is America?