Did we make a cultural mistake popularizing the car?

[Ravenshire]

The automobile absolutely made getting places so much easier that it would be impossible for it not to be popular. The thing to remember is that some areas (in fact vast tracts of land) do not have any sort of infrastructure for personal transportation beyond having a car or truck and some federally provided road available.  You live in NY City, right? Cabs are common, and you have the subway. Contrast that with many places on the west coast, where MAYBE a bus or some such can get you where you want to go. When I was in the US Navy, I went home to get my car so that I could have a better ability to get around (shore duty). I left about 5 PM on Friday. I took buses and cabs and finally had a family member pick me up about 20 miles from home at 2 AM. I should have just asked that family member to drive to Long Beach and get me, and go back home. That would have taken 3 hours, tops. It was only 55 miles!

If you are addressing the vehicle "culture", well I'll bet you money that there is probably a newspaper report somewhere detailing how two young bravos were racing their parents' buckboards and had an accident.

Yeah but you're using problems that exist as a result of the popularization of car usage that wouldn't otherwise exist if, for the last 100+ years, we prioritized different, more accessible means of transportation.

This is really more of a theoretical question that we can't really do much about today. Hence the History section.

For roughly 2/3 (geographically) of the country, mass transit could not be made economically viable. For example, in Colorado, roughly one half of the population is concentrated in the Denver Metro area, 155 sq. miles. That leaves the other 2.8 million spread out over 104,030 sq. miles. When you consider Wyoming, it becomes even more striking. Denver (not the entire metro, just Denver proper) has more people than the whole state. The population densities outside of major metro areas simply won't support mass transit except for long distance trips. and the population densities drop drastically (with California being the obvious exception) as you move west from the Mississippi.The evolution of the car culture here in the sates was geographically driven. Of course, it didn't help that Henry Ford made the automobile affordable to the masses at the same time.

[ignoramus]

OK, do we really believe that removing the combustion engine from the world will change a lot as far as climate change goes?
Then what's the point of this discussion?

Someone once said, if we didn't invent the car, the world would be under 12 foot of horse shit!
And with the CO2 the squillions of horses would exhale would negate any advantages from the oil burners.

That's a lot of fertilizer!

[The Grand Nudger]

It would if we could, and insomuch as we can....it's a start.

[Maketakunai]

Well, if you can imagine how much time people spend commuting to work, shopping, etc. without cars then I suppose this question answers itself. I don't own a car because I just haven't needed one for about a decade. I take public transportation and I own an electric scooter for getting around between bus stops. My current commute takes 1 hour and 25 minutes to travel 12 miles. Because of how the local bus routes run, on nice days I can shave off 30 minutes by riding the scooter to a stop along the route of the 2nd bus I have to take to get to work.

My commute right now is more or less the same as it would have looked for someone before Mr. Ford started up his production line. When I was still driving that same commute only took 20 minutes. So, for simplicity, let's say that a car gives me 2 hours a day just on my daily commute. That's 10 hours more a week (or 520 hours annually) to be more productive, run misc. errands, do the shopping, see a movie, take a class, etc.

I'm not entirely convinced that if you stole 520 hours a year from every person who ever owned a car that the world would be a better place now. I can't even begin to imagine how much longer it would take a farmer to cultivate a field or get crops to market without the development of the highway system that exists primarily due to our collective love affair with the automobile. My guess is that technology and a lot of the things that make life more pleasant for everyone would not be nearly as advanced as they are today if the people who invent, develop, and produce those things had to spend an extra 500+ hours a year just getting from place to place.

Without cars, we might be having this conversation on Wazniak Blue Boxes...

[The Grand Nudger]

It's true that cars (and the combustion engine in general) served an incredible purpose in our technological development, but so did the coal fired steam engines that used to run trains.  

Ag (can't help it) is one of the biggest areas where we need to get out of petrochem reliance.  It's tech that's past it's prime and beginning to act at cross purpose. Buy local from hardcore sustainable producers, yall. Start a community farm if you don't have one. It'll be dead easy to find someone to operate it....lot's of folks at the walmart wishing they could have kept farming instead.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I live in a house instead of a vertical tenement because transportation is available.

[Brian37]

Do you think we made a mistake building around car usage, and not establishing communities with expanded public transportation and walkability? Streetcars, trains, subways... did we fuck up a century ago? I think we might have. Cars suck.

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No, we made a mistake allowing rich oil barons to monopolize global politics.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Cars have some distinct advantagess.

Can you imagine some teenaged boy trying to rip off a piece of ass in the back seat of a bus????

I don't have to 'imagine' it, tyvm.  Wish I could remember her name, though.

Boru

[no one]

Nope!

I'll second 37's view.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

Why stop at cars! Planes, trains?
The Titanic burnt like 6 thousand tons of coal a day?

What alternatives does our planet offer to the combustion engine?
Now we may have hitech batteries but what about in the industrial age?

Everything comes back down to dirty smelly polluting coal...
I'm still waiting for my Mr Fusion to arrive from ebay for $99.99.

Well.... if you want relativy good electricity production, bounce per ounce, nuclear fission fits the bill.