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By the 1970s, it was clear that the thrill had disappeared for some
of us. At last America's love affair with the automobile was cooling
and it was now just a marriage of convenience. Some would still say
that nothing has changed; that America still loves the automobile, in
spite of social observers who might say that love of a machine is a
sickness. It's just that the automobile can now be seen for what it
was intended to be in the first place: something to get us from point
A to point B in a faster, more comfortable way. We understand now
that the car is just another mechanical appliance. We also understand
the price we pay in having that appliance for convenience: we must
cope with inflated prices from car companies, petroleum producers,
and special interest lobbies; we must also cope with an environment
which has been degraded, as well as with product unreliability that
drains our pockets and consumes our time.
The numbers of cars are awesome in size. There are about 130,000,000
passenger cars on the streets and highways of the country. There are
40,000,000 other types of vehicles who vie with the automobiles for
almost 4,000,000 miles of roadway. Consider Belgium, Denmark, France,
Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and West
Germany - whose combined populations are about 40,000,000 more than
that of the United States, and where automobiles are as available and
affordable as they are in America; they also had cars before we did.
In spite of this, there are 29,000,000 fewer cars in those countries
combined than in the United States. America owns about 40%% of all
the motor vehicles in the world. Four of every ten American families
own two or more vehicles.
Once every seven minutes, someone somewhere in New York, tired of
fighting or nursing their cars, abandons it on the city's streets.
Illegal parking plagues the world. Paris police say that 1/3 of all
cars on that city's streets at any given time are parked illegally.
Japan will not even register a car unless the owner can prove that he
has bought or rented a parking space to put it in. Washington, New
York, Philadelphia, and other American cities are so frustrated and
overcome by parking tickets that they hire collection agencies to try
to collect some of them. Chicago has $500,000,000 worth of unpaid
tickets and writes another 4,000,000 every year. Then there are the
staggering amounts paid for policemen, administration, judges,
besides the enormous sum paid to keep the highways in good condition.
The car may not use any oats while it is parked, but it creates huge
problems for society.
Casper, Wyoming, with a population of 1,000, has 729 vehicles. Los
Angeles has 3,040 cars per square mile. Larger cities have cramped
living space into cubicles to build mass-transport highways and ramps
that clog the air with pollution from the exhaust pipes. 2/3 of Los
Angeles is taken up with streets, ramps, freeways, parking facilities
and garages. This is not to mention that many of the houses include
garage attachments. Automobile density is worsening each day. The
U.S. Government has imposed a Clean Air act to eliminate some of the
smog and lethal gases, but catalytic converters, while suppressing
some emissions, are substituting others which cause cancer, according
to Swiss research.
Besides the 44,175 people killed in automobile accidents in 1984,
1,600,000 other received injuries, 150,000 of them permanent. During
nine years of war in Viet Nam, the total American dead was only about
2,000 greater than the number killed on the highway in 1983, and the
wounded was less than 1/10 of those disabled in automobile accidents
that year. More Americans have died in automobile accidents than have
been killed in all the wars that America ever fought, making the love
of the automobile a dark romance, to say the least. What does it cost
to run the automobile? Well, in spite of "falling" gas prices and
increased fuel efficiency, a study released by Hertz Corporation in
1985 says that the average cost is 45.67 cents per mile for a compact
and 59.77 cents for a standard-sized car. If you drive 10,000 miles a
year, and include depreciation, insurance, licensing, repairs,
accessories, gas and oil, the total comes to over $4,500 per year for
a compact and almost $6,000 for a standard. (And that was in 1985!)
You can see then that driving a car is not just a "free-wheeling"
lark, but has become a big bite out of the old pocketbook.
Some economists state that one worker in every five (others say seven
or six) workers in the U.S. labor force is employed by some activity
related to automobiles. The modern car is made up of some 14,000
parts. These parts are fashioned out of steel, glass, rubber, chrome,
and aluminum, among countless other elements.
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