Broken hearted cities -Why driving is the new smoking
By: Alex Dyer
Tags: Mobility, Public Health, Urbanism, Smoking, Car Culture

The harmfulness of driving

Heavy vehicles harm in sometimes acute, graphic, and sudden ways, but also frequently in obscure, insidious ways.

The less obvious ways that driving harms are more clearly similar to how smoking harms.

Consumer harm

Driving kills. Since the year 2000, more Americans died in traffic crashes than were lost during both World Wars.

Occupants of cars are exposed to higher levels of air pollution than people outside, as fumes and harmful particulates become concentrated in enclosed spaces.

Mortality from the worst non-communicable diseases would be significantly reduced if people who drive would cycle or walk for more of their journeys. For instance: commuting by bike can reduce the risk of heart disease by 46% and lower the risk of developing cancer by 45%!

Addiction

Driving is addictive. Once you own a car, driving tends to become difficult to give up.

Private motorised vehicles are as seemingly pervasive as cigarettes once were. Users can become agitated if they might have to walk further to their cars and are comforted by being able to keep them close by. Present bias plays into how habitual cars often are.

Driving is an expensive habit. Smoking a tank of petrol or diesel every other week can quickly put a big dent in back pockets.

There is also an enormous public bill for this addiction. Building and maintaining infrastructure, servicing the cost of ownership, and cushioning health and safety effects is significant, and contributing to intergenerational debt.

If someone really wants to quit driving there are often significant barriers that require will, creativity, and perseverance to overcome. Intervention helps.

Projected harm

Driving harms others. A significant aspect of the demise of smoking was the second-hand smoke issue, or ‘passive smoking’.

Inconsiderate jerk! © Andy Singer

I think of passive smoking as a form of ‘projected harm’ — where harm is done to others in an arbitrary, oblique way.

It is (now) unacceptable that smoking — an activity someone chooses to engage in — should expose others to serious health risks.

Are cars really so different? They are literally creating a passive smoke injustice in a majority of cities.

While electric cars reduce tailpipe emissions, they still generate lung-damaging particulate emissions from tyre, brake, and road wear.

Children are unwittingly exposed to air pollution when they are transported by car. Only the source and type of smoke from this passive smoking is different.

You might be thinking:

Does having a less recreational purpose for a product make any harm they inflict more acceptable? I’m not sure it does. Especially if that harm is to others.

Driving of private motor vehicles also projects harm onto others in ways other than air pollution.

Excessive car traffic in cities and residential areas creates a significant barrier for many to lead active lifestyles. In this way, driving is projecting harm through health risks due to inactivity.

This problem is also particularly unjust to children.

Driving also harms others through road violence. According to the World Health Organisation, 26% of deaths from road violence around the globe are people who were walking or cycling. Figuring out who does the killing is an interesting topic.

(Spoiler: It’s people driving heavy motorised vehicles)

Some other projected harms from driving:

noise pollution

light pollution

near misses and traumatic experiences

visual obstruction

constricted space for people

heightened caregiver anxiety and effort

reduced green space

suburban sprawl

social disconnection, mental health impacts

wildlife loss of habitat

dead animals

climate breakdown

Total annual deaths — comparing smoking and driving and divided by user harm and projected harm. The absolute total number of deaths from secondhand smoking is less than from projected harm from driving. Deaths related to climate change attributable to driving are rather small at this time, but this could become a large contributor if unmitigated.

Annual global deaths relative percentages — comparing proportions of causes of deaths between smoking and driving. The projected harm from driving is over half the total. Secondhand smoking was a significant motivator in choosing to reduce smoking rates — especially in public. What amount of projected harm from driving is needed until we feel the same urgency?

The health of cities

Crippling congestion of too many cars is to a city what a heart attack is to a person.

Dividing cities into sections. © Andy Singer

As a city’s transport corridors are filled with larger vehicles in less free flowing streams of traffic, the risk of clogged arteries grows.

On-road car storage is to city streets as plaque is to arteries. It builds up and slows the flow. If untreated road plaque increases the risk of traffic clotting and stopping the healthy circulation of people.

Cars create more distance than they overcome. As our addiction to cars grows, our cities expand, pushing people further from each other and exacerbating mobility challenges.

The analogy between city congestion and human biology has been employed before to illustrate this problem, but we need to shift our perspective of how to address it.

Cities stand to contribute a great deal in mitigating climate breakdown by transforming the mix of transport.