We talk a lot about guns in the US, without doing anything about them.
But there’s another, even more dangerous arms race, going on.
It involves cars.
It’s not just that there are too many of them. They’re too damned big. Spending $60,000 for a pick-up that will never see a trailer hitch, or an SUV higher than an elephant’s eye, is stupid. Especially since these cars are sitting, unused, 90% of the time.
People buy giant cars for the same reason they buy guns. They make you feel safe. They buy as much car as they can afford, like these things are houses.
But big cars kill. They only provide an illusion of safety. They don’t just kill the people in them. They kill the people all around them. People in smaller cars, on bikes, and just walking around. They must be stored wherever they stop.
This hasn’t changed with our move to electrics. It has only accelerated. Companies like Tesla built luxury cars first to get the profit margin. Detroit is following with copies of their existing giant vehicles. The mid-market is being ignored. The electric revolution is being undermined.
A lot of chips and software have gone into big electric cars that contributes to the illusion of safety. Self-driving isn’t here and won’t be until cars can be integrated into traffic systems. Those big displays between the front seats are more distracting than your cell phone. Voice interfaces haven’t kept up because the voice systems are incompatible and because the car companies demand control over them.
What this means is that a lot of the lifestyle improvements promised for this decade are being put off. Cities can’t be redesigned because giant cars maintain the illusion of eternal suburbia.
We’re overlaying the future on the past and paying double for an unchanged lifestyle.
Of course, this only applies to the upper middle-class. Most people can’t yet afford an electric car.
I see trouble ahead. A lot of people are being killed in this new arms race, and many more will be.
