Stigmatizing Cars like Tobacco

New York’s ‘Transportation Alternatives’ group which often makes a strong case for better facilities for cyclists and for traffic calming measures on local streets in the NY area is also unfortunately on an extreme beat-up on cars-&-roads binge. In its latest issue of TA (Oct./Nov 99 p2) it suggests that cars be subjected to a stigmatization similar to tobacco. They are both a ‘public health’ issue, it is claimed.

They say we need to “change the social norms around using automobiles to push automobile use out of the charmed circle of normal, desirable practice to be being an abnormal practice...”

So they want to deglamorize car use, establish well-funded comprehensive programs to ‘denormalize’ and limit car use, increase taxes on cars and car use, bar industry from spending money on promoting car use and “strictly regulate auto production, marketing and sales” – as has happened with tobacco.

But outside Manhattan the whole American economy and way of life are built around rubber-tired transport in a way in which tobacco use was never central. You might as well be against electricity.