Let’s Cancel Car Culture

With the movie Ford vs Ferrari (about the efforts of Ford to best Ferrari at the Le Mans race in the 1960s) coming into theaters this weekend, it might be a good time to think about cars and car culture.

There have been (at least) two movies this year about driving. Both Ford vs Ferrari and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood focus are both midcentury period pieces that are either about the act of driving midcentury cars or that predominately feature driving midcentury cars.

And while Ford vs Ferrari is super fun and entertaining movie, it points out how much we are still stuck in midcentury car culture, where cars represented freedom and ease of movement.

While driving can be pleasurable, it’s time we think about why we’ve built billions of dollars in highway infrastructure, based partly on the idea that driving is fun.

However, when there are too many people trying to do it at once, driving no longer becomes fun.

We keep pouring money into our highway system, trying to make more highways to solve the problem of too many people using the highways. Wouldn’t we be better off if we were able to realize that if we took the outmoded and highly subective “joy” of driving out of the equation, we might more sensibly put more money into public transit?

Maybe in the future we’ll make progress away from car culture representing freedom? Maybe we’re already partly there? Many teenagers now don’t even want to get their driver’s license!

Maybe in a perfect world, driving would be left at the racetrack?

Full disclosure: I’ve been driving back and fourth between Houston and Austin at least once a week since March. Usually more than once a week. Driving a lot makes you think about why you are driving a lot.