Cars 2: A Culture Shock

After making my last post I realised  that although I might have communicated the detrimental effect that cars can have on our environment, growth of a 'car culture' and the number of cars over time was only touched upon.

In what will be only a short post, I hope I can remedy that with a multimedia feast.  While the number of cars can (and will) be seen as a proxy, one can argue that it is the way a 'car culture' has been growing that is the most detrimental travel related factor for global environmental change. Car culture "a lifestyle built around using cars... [and] the practice and regular usage of cars in cities around the world" has been developing since the invention of the automobile, but began to really appear as the global north emerged from a post WW2 slump.

Fig. 1 clearly illustrates that even in 1949, people around the world were already travelling around 10 bn miles a year in cars and taxis, and within 20 years this had increased to close to 100bn.

Figure 1. While there seems to have been a decrease in the miles driven using motor vehicles  post 2006, there is a clear increase from 1949. The most rapid growth seems to have been during the 1980s, where the miles driven in cars and taxis alone grew from 130bn to 210bn.

Although this short video looks solely at America and its car culture, it describes clearly the reasons for its growth during the 1950s. I recommend listening out for what "few people worried about..." as to me, although this video focusses on the 50s, few people in America worry about these things now.

Closer to home Lucas and Jones (2009) illustrate the growth of a 'car culture' in the uk with a whole host of statistics in  an RAC published study. They suggest:

"Car ownership and use have continued to grow and extend across the population since the late eighties and are now embedded into most aspects of daily life in Britain." (p. 12)

They show that the use of a car as a percentage of all personal trips rose from 46% in 1975 to 63% in 2002, with low income households experiencing the greatest increase in car ownership. Overall "levels of car use are now well above those considered to be sustainable nationally", and 7 million more cars now than in 1995 (p. 11).