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Showing posts from July, 2014

The Cost of Driving

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The true cost and impact of our modern transportation system is hidden in plain sight, obscured by its sheer size and central role in our daily lives. So entangling is the relationship between society and its means of transport that we often lose sight of the distinction between them. Looking around at our environment, especially if we live in the city, there is little that we can point to that is not largely defined by the needs of the automotive systems.  The human cost  alone of our automobile based system is truly shocking. Worldwide the roads consume lives at the same rate –roughly one million every year -as did the concentration camps of World War II. The wounded number tens of millions more. In addition there are the large numbers of people debilitated by air pollution and associated impacts of the internal combustion engine.  And yet these costs, as vast as they are, are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the human resources committed to the system. Each one of us