My usual stroll back home from dropping the children off at school was earlier than usual this morning, so I had the chance to enjoy the nose-to-tail traffic along the main road, counting the number of vehicles that only had one person in them. Not surprisingly the vast majority were one person vehicles, with the main exceptions being children on their way to school – probably late because they were stuck in traffic.

The only time I see a decent crop of multi-occupancy vehicles is on the main holiday roads in the UK which, when they aren’t snarled up by the bizarre “let’s all set off at the same time” ritual or local lunchtime or rush-hour traffic, tend to be more free-flowing than other roads. Of course that is totally unscientific, and shame on me for making such a statement – but it’s obvious, really, isn’t it? Visualize a line of traffic and look at the people in the vehicles. Then imagine the number of people in each vehicle doubling, and the line of traffic halving. It’s not a perfect equation, but it is a nice thought. Half the traffic, half the carbon dioxide, and less danger to the pedestrians who have to negotiate the traffic.

The psychology of motorised transport is complex and often full of contradictions, but in a nutshell, the cocoon effect of the car tends to make people feel protected (or rather, isolated) from the outside world. The driver in a pedestrian situation is vulnerable to pollution and injury and, thus, feels uncomfortable – by default a driver is a driver and a pedestrian is a pedestrian; it is a mindset. No wonder, then, that so many journeys that would, only a few years ago, have been made on foot or bicycle are now made by car. Public transport is an interesting case of semi-vulnerability but, in general, those of a ‘pedestrian’ mindset are more comfortable taking a bus than those of a ‘driver’ mindset.

Sadly for the planet, the driver mindset is predominant. This is entirely down to the way that cars are marketed. Advertisers make us want to drive because that’s how they sell vehicles. Martin Paterson of the University of Ottowa analyzed a range of advertisements from the US auto market and summed them up in this way:

The dismissal of the consequences of one’s actions, or at least their dismissal in the face of the more highly valued victory in the game of driving, encapsulates both the theme of the individualist and the overarching ‘rights’ to go anywhere, the vehicle is literally driven everywhere, regardless of the consequences to either environment or others.

This is frightening because it suggests that the ‘driver’s mindset’ is not a natural phenomenon; it is the creation of the auto industry.

This “go anywhere” attitude is demonstrated in the statistics for vehicle occupancy in the USA. A query on the National Household Travel Survey (from 2001, but still relevant) shows that the average vehicle occupancy in the USA is a frankly appalling 1.63. You would expect this to be skewed towards rural drivers, but this is not the case. It turns out that urban and suburban drivers are even worse than rural drivers in their habits – not by much, but enough to show that the problem is not related to need, it is a national (and increasingly global) psyche, created by industry, encouraged by planners, and supported by the public who can’t see the traffic jam for the cars.

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.greenseniors.org
And proud member of The Sietch