It is the car. And it isn't just sport utility vehicles or souped-up Ford Mustangs. It's that beat-up Honda you received as a hand-me-down from your parents when they bought a nice, new Lexus.
Our American car-happy culture needs to be overhauled for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important is because cars isolate us so much. You are a suburban kid. You have no license yet. You can't drive, but you have to go to soccer practice, or violin lessons, or youth group or what have you. So you get in the car, and Mom or Dad take you where you need to go. To return home, once again Mom or Dad must drive you.
Several years later, you are one of the legions of high schoolers with a set of wheels and keys. To go to school, you get in the car and drive. To go to the library to meet your French tutor you get in the car and drive. To go home you get in the car and drive. To pick up your brother from his friend's house you get in the car and drive.
The repetition of constantly getting in the car and driving to your destination has become a necessity. People have come to think of cars as the quickest and most efficient way to get from point A to point B, even if in getting there you have to sit in traffic inhaling the smog from the person's car in front of you. The sheer size and distance between our communities has made walking a near impossibility, and the public transportation in most places is in a deplorable condition and is not convenient enough to serve most people.
How has this happened? To answer this I will make an example of our lovely town of Chapel Hill. The central part of Chapel Hill, encompassed largely by the areas surrounding Franklin Street, has been around at least since the 1920s and some of it before that. This area is pleasant to walk through and is characterized by small streets such as Cameron Street. Before the advent of the automobile it was essential to be able to walk where you needed to go. During the '50s and '60s, planners started to take a different approach to cities and towns. The oil industry and the car industry are to this day hand-in-glove, and I might suggest that they took a large part in financing the building of the highways that separate our communities.
The consequences of car culture have been experienced by many and identified by few. It is obvious when going through any suburban neighborhood that the most important member of the family is the car. Just notice its prominent place out front and the position of the garage taking up half the space in an average family-sized home. Inside a car you can create your own environment, but that prevents you from noticing the environment outside. The American Dream propounded by the Division of Highways and the oil industry of a car in the driveway of every middle-class suburban home has paved the way for the American Nightmare of death, pollution, and isolation.
That is the story to date. Although it isn't a very nice story, like all good tales it has a moral. Assuming that you must be fairly intelligent to thrive as you are at Carolina, you have been able to see that cars have created a general mess. In response to this mess, people from around the world are joining together to proclaim the first ever Earth Car-Free Day. Just as on Independence Day we proclaim our independence from the sovereignty of Great Britain, on Earth Car-Free Day we proclaim our independence from the manacle of the steering wheel.
Discover the springtime flowers in bloom by walking to the supermarket. Enjoy the conversation of your co-workers by carpooling or, better yet, riding the bus together. Feel the relief of never having to worry about the rising cost of gas or the decline in value of your steel and fiberglass behemoth on wheels. Because I know a lot of you will be marrying this summer after graduation, consider buying a house in walkable or bikeable distance from the town where you work and shop. Old houses in cities are often better-constructed then new suburban houses and are sometimes of historical interest. But even if you take none of my advice, at least consider whether the car has really affected the convenience and relaxation present in your life.
Judith E. Freimark is a freshman biology major. E-mail her at starryj81@hotmail.com.
