Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

All the ways cars suck, according to the guy who wrote the book about it

All the ways cars suck, according to the guy who wrote the book about it

There was once a time when Americans didn't care about cars. Now, personal transportation has taken over, writes author Daniel Knowles.

It's hard to imagine a time when America, home to history's most famous car manufacturer and the world's first monster truck, almost rejected having cars in their cities over a century ago.

Daniel Knowles, author of "Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What To Do About It," chronicled a period in the 1920s, when Americans were incensed by the ever-encroaching presence of cars on their streets — cars that were killing pedestrians and taking over the roads they traversed on by foot.

Demonstrations across the country ensued. One person even wrote to The New York Times, suggesting that pedestrians crossing their street should point their guns at anyone driving in self-defense, Knowles wrote.

Knowles, whose work cited historian Peter Norton's book "Fighting Traffic" for much of this chapter, told Insider that it was one of the most eye-opening facts about cars he learned when researching his new book.

"Cincinnati had a law that almost passed that would have forced every car to have an automatic speed limiter built into it," Knowles told Insider. "And this huge backlash against cars when they first arrived, I actually was really surprised through it. I think I had this idea that like, mobile phones or something, everyone sort of said, 'Oh, it's just a new invention, I guess I'll buy one' and then everybody else bought them."

Now, thanks to lobbying efforts by the automotive industry to move pedestrians off the roads and into cars, Americans view cars much differently, he said. Cars are a necessity and even a symbol of self-reliance and the American dream, Knowles wrote.

Knowles's book, however, argued that those early fighters of car culture may have been onto something.

Cars suck because they blow — chemicals and particulate matter, that is, Knowles wrote. They contribute heavily to the climate crisis. They isolate us from bustling cities, but we cling to the idea that they give us freedom. Now, cars are driving us toward our smog-filled doom, he wrote.

Knowles, who lives in Chicago and does not own a car, also wrote about the unequal distribution of harms by cars that affect people of color. Communities of color are more likely to be exposed to harmful air pollution, regardless of region or income. Car culture destabilized cities like Detroit by helping planners and local lawmakers implement laws that would build freeways in cities to accommodate white, suburban car owners, he added.

Despite this, Knowles wrote, cars persist. Data shows that they are infiltrating every nook and cranny of our limited space on Earth as car ownership grows all around the world. Between 2017 and 2021, the number of registered vehicles in the US rose by nearly 4%. In 2016, research found that globally, the number of cars in the world would double from 1 billion to 2 billion by 2040.

"Even in America today, I think the big challenge is political, and part of that problem is what people on the internet call 'car brain' — you know, the crowd of anti-car people who are big on like Reddit and that sort of thing, but… I think when you become completely dependent on your car, the idea of making driving somewhere something more expensive or more difficult, or in any way restricting, it feels like a sort of an assault."


How to ditch cars completely


The issues that cars present are some that policymakers are already privy to. Their solution is to go all in on electric vehicles.

In April, the Biden administration unveiled an investment plan to make electric vehicles more affordable for lower-income families. It's part of a larger goal to make 50% of vehicle sales electric by 2030 to fight off the worst impacts of climate change.

California has also unveiled a plan to make sure all new cars sold beyond 2035 are zero-emissions vehicles.

But, as many transportation experts have argued before, Knowles told Insider that he believes we need to ditch cars completely for public transport, both for human rights reasons and because of the massive environmental cost of maintaining so many vehicles on the road.

To change America's car culture, Knowles said that he thinks public transportation planners need to start focusing on accommodating people who could use it the most, such as lower-income families burdened by car costs, or women taking care of children.

"A study that the LA Metro had done found was it disproportionately mothers who had a part-time job, and some caring responsibilities, and found that transit just wasn't working for them," Knowles said, describing a 2019 study that found women who used public transport were burdened by worries such as safety and accessibility for them and their children. "And those are the people you need to be targeting."

Knowles also said policies that make it harder to drive and easier to use public transportation will help.

"So many American cities have been passing laws, changing parking requirements and changing zoning so that developers can build apartments and dense housing around public transport stops," Knowles said. "And so I think I'd be more optimistic."

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×