In our society today, limiting car usage would be the best way to go. There are plenty of advantages to limiting car usage, with a decrease in pollution just to name one of them. If we can capatalize on the downward shift of automobile users in the United States and around the world, then it would benefit all of us in more ways then one.

Having a car can be handy to get from point A to point B, but what if you just do not need to use that car at all? What if you are just to lazy to walk or bike to your destination? I am not saying you should walk 80 miles to your aunt's house, but what if it was just to the store that was a half of a mile away. Not to mention that you would be saving good on gas money. There is a mostly car free suburb, for example, in Germany that focuses on a majority of the population of the neighborhood to not use cars. This town is named Vauban, and 70 percent of families do not own a car here. It may sound bad to those who live and die by their car, but with everything in walking distance it makes it easy and accesible to walk from point A to point B most of the time. The residents of this suburb are positive about this change, and they should be, because it is a positive change.

One very large problem with the excessive use of cars in one area is air pollution. Lots of cars in the same area commuting can create a thick layer of smoke in the air called smog, and it is not pleasent to experience on the road. That being said, Paris had recently gotten so much smog in the air that it had to put down a partial ban, license plates with even numbers could not drive on Monday, while odd numbered plates could not drive on Tuesday. It sounds crazy, how could such a busy city like Paris realistically put down a travel ban on half of the commuters? Whether you thought it would or not, it worked. Sure there were a couple of motorists who could not take no for an answer and still commuted when they were not suppose to, but a large majority followed the rules of this ban. Apparently the French government underestimated the factor these cars had on the environment, as the ban was recinded early on Tuesday for the pollution almost completely cleared away.

In support of those two points, the amount of drivers every year has been going down since its peak point in 2005. The gap is nearly nine percent, almost a tenth of the United States has stopped driving in the last 10 years. With this pattern taking place, scientists believe that it will only have postive benefits for the environment and the communities in the forseeable future. The United States is one of the most polluted countries in the world, which in large part is because of our advanced and highly populated culture. That doesnt mean we cant make a difference and help our community grow into a better place environmentally. One good example of that happening is the car free day in Bogota. In this city millions of people got around without using cars and have been since 1995 in this program. It has led to the blooming of brand new parks and repaved, smoother sidewalks. If millions of Colombians can make their community a better place in a heavily populated area, so should we.

To summarize, plenty of places around the world are making good efforts to tone down on car usage. This helps bring down levels of air pollution, enhance the community that those people live in and help their financial situations by saving money on buying a car. If we in America can make these kind of efforts to decrease car usage, our whole country would be better for it in more ways than one.