| Poison | Chemical pollution in urban areas but not just in cities. Even the pollution from a tanker sinking, and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, ultimately are a result of the presence of the automobile. Not to mention global warming ... |
|---|---|
| Noise | Noise pollution, as harmful as chemical pollution, cars and motorcycles are among the main causes of noise pollution in the city, the countryside and mountains. |
| Obstruction | That is, loss of livability, traffic congestion and invasion of the livable areas of cities and countryside. Plus, the car takes up a significant amount of space even when it's standing still! |
| Carnage | Thousands of deaths and injuries on the roads (each year: 9,000 deaths in Italy, more than 50,000 deaths in the U.S., more than one million worldwide, 40 million deaths since the invention of the car to date). In brief cars and motorcycles kill more people than wars. |
| War | If it is true that cars and motorcycles kill more people than wars, it is also true that the dependency on cars and motorcycles has become a major cause of war. The latest, such as the Gulf war of 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, were about fuel - "car wars" - and it is to be expected that others will follow. |
| Waste | Abnormal waste, in addition to the fuel required; to carry just one person weighing 150/175 pounds, one has to move a ton or more of scrap metal. |
| Hunger | Until a few years ago it would have seemed absurd to think that the automobile contributes to the rising cost of food and thereby impacts the oldest human disaster, hunger. Yet this is exactly what is happening. |
| Chaos | Use of the private automobile inevitably leads to situations of disorder which then become increasingly serious; "traffic chaos" is just the tip of the iceberg of this situation, a vicious circle in which traffic congestion is used to justify the construction of new roads, highways, expressways ... thereby promoting development (e.g. classic examples are hypermarkets and shopping malls) which in turn generates new traffic ... |
| Ugliness | Cities and countryside are now defaced by layers of asphalt and the infestation of thousands and thousands of metal rhinoceroses (*) (whether they are cars or motorcycles makes little difference) standing still or in motion. |
| Luxury | The automobile is still seen as the primary way of flaunting one's wealth, in other words, demonstrating a luxurious way of life. |
| Gasoline dependency | The mentality of motorists is indistinguishable from that of a drug addict, held prisoner and possessed by his drug. The deleterious effects of the sedentary life of the motorist are well-known and seem equally well-forgotten. |
Given all these drawbacks, one might think that only the criminally insane could have conceived a transportation system based on individual car ownership, and that, as suggested by Mishan, the automobile should be abolished completely, and yet...human history has been, and continues to be, the story of criminal madness
As for myself, I abolished the automobile from my life and have lived very well "car-free"; it is a choice that I made in 1976 and that I have never regretted.
