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Let’s look at cars truthfully, please, for what they are: noisy, speeding, spewing metal boxes that injure and kill unconscionable numbers of people, animals and birds.
We count how many people are killed; if we counted the animals struck, the number would be horrifying. This is why television advertisements that glorify the automobile by placing it in an idyllic setting make me squirm. An SUV parked on a desolate beach, or racing up a forested slope, or posed on a cliff like a mountain lion.
What corporate deceit to suggest that an SUV has anything at all in common with Nature, when in reality it tramples and uglifies everything around it.
If only an automobile really was in harmony with Nature, how much better off the world would be. Imagine a chariot of hemp that travels no faster than a bird — or no faster than a cyclist, as a new law in Amsterdam dictates.
“I love to draw street scenes, and that means that you have to draw cars, but I hate drawing modern cars,” the French cartoonist Sempé said. “They are very fast and very efficient, but they have no charm.”
Amen.
Ann Parson is a New Bedford area science writer and a founder of the New Bedford Science Cafe.
Well said AP. Keep us thinking!
That could be said about windmill farms, solar panels, and any urban sprawl. I agree that modern vehicles are probably the most bland, generic, and uninspiring they have ever been.
Exactly what you are trying to accomplish by writing this article is a mystery though. What manufacturers are trying to sell is a lifestyle that, believe it or not, is getting very popular. You obviously have never been on a camping trip with your children where they engage with nature, make family memories, and plant the seed to carry on the tradition. This article is ignorant at best.