Lesson 3
Lesson 3: Un-Safe Space: How Cars Destroy Your Health and Lower Your Quality of Life
“I know that some people count their car commute as free time, or time to unwind. That’s bunk. During my free time I’m known to hit golf balls at the driving range, watch a movie, play cards, and even nod off. None of these things should be attempted while driving a car.”
– Todd Koym
Living without a car can greatly improve your quality of life. It can give you greater peace of mind, lower your stress level, improve your health, eliminate hassles, provide more social interaction, and result in more free time.
Your standard of living can also improve. Without a car to pay for, you’ll be able to buy a nicer house and have more money to furnish it. You may be able to afford real vacations and frequent time off to travel. The only part of the standard-of-living equation you won’t have is the car.
Take a look at this YouTube video by avid bicyclist Ryan Van Duzer. His channel has lots of great cycling and adventure content. But I particularly like his description of the wellness boost and lifestyle benefits of going car free and riding a bike instead of driving.
Car Free Success Story:
The great payoffs of going car free or car lite are money and time. A car isn’t just an expense – though my car-bound friends do seem to spend a huge amount of money on car payments, gas, repairs, insurance, etc.—owning a car also eats time. After you go car free, add it up and all of a sudden you may be surprised to find that you have time to have a life.
Stop Hassling Me
An immediate benefit of going car free is the long list of hassles and frustrations you’ll no longer have to deal with. Every car – regardless of make, model, year, or price – comes with a collection of inconveniences and headaches that we wouldn’t tolerate from anything else in our lives. Yet for some reason, we accept this aggravation from our cars.
80 Things You’ll Never Miss About Owning a Car
- Spending time at gas stations
- Rising gas prices
- Hours of your life spent in traffic
- Highway construction delays
- Road rage
- Mysterious engine noises
- Screeching brakes
- Interior squeaks and rattles
- Annoying minor repairs
- Costly major repairs
- Trying to find a reputable car repair shop
- Waiting for your car to be fixed
- Wondering if you were overcharged
- Hoping it’s fixed right the first time
- Going back to have it fixed a second time
- Worrying about damage to your parked car
- Car theft, vandalism, and break-ins
- Chipped and cracked windshields
- Spending time and money on car washes
- Flat Tires
- Paying automobile taxes
- Paying registration fees
- Dead batteries
- Scraping ice off a frozen windshield
- Waiting for the car to warm up on a winter morning
- Tailgaters
- Altercations with other drivers
- Waiting in line at the DMV
- Getting pulled over for speeding
- Paying speeding tickets
- Paying parking tickets
- Paying tickets for expired tags
- Paying to renew your tags
- Having your car towed and impounded
- Going to traffic court
- Waiting in line to get your oil changed
- Forgetting to bring the oil change coupon
- Rust and deterioration
- Calling to schedule repairs
- Paying for the 30,000 mile tuneup
- Paying for the 60,000 mile tuneup
- Paying for the 100,000 mile tuneup
- Shopping for a car
- High-pressure car salespeople
- Negotiating a fair price
- Worrying about paying too much
- Buying a lemon
- Manufacturer recalls
- Hail and storm damage
- Fender benders, scrapes, and door dings
- Driving over debris in the road
- Buying car-wash products
- Vacuuming the interior
- Wasting time looking for a parking spot
- Paying to park
- That feeling of dread when your car won’t start
- Asking a stranger for a jump
- Shopping for car insurance
- Paying car insurance
- Car insurance increases
- Getting dropped by your insurance company
- Driving in snow and ice
- Uneven wear on tires
- Shopping for new tires
- Waiting to have tires rotated
- Trying to keep the mileage below the number allowed in your lease
- Paying a penalty for going over the allowed mileage
- Listening to endless commercials on the car radio
- Fighting with the radio to avoid commercials
- Developing a sedentary lifestyle
- Putting on weight from lack of exercise
- High cholesterol from eating drive-thru food
- Heart disease from eating drive-thru food
- Diabetes from eating drive-thru food
- Locking the keys in the car
- Remembering to feed your parking meter
- Forgetting to feed your meter
- Paying tolls
- Getting lost
- Pumping gas in the freezing cold
Some of the items on this list, taken by themselves, may not seem like a big deal. But what car owners fail to notice is the long-term, cumulative effect all these little nuisances have on overall quality of life. The items on this list cause aggravation, stress, and worry, and they contribute to a more complicated life. How nice would it be to leave all these problems behind. By going car free you can.
Car Free Success Story:
I don’t have to worry about ridiculously high gas prices. I don’t have to worry about insurance. Plus, riding a bike has put me in better physical shape than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve dropped over forty pounds and my blood sugar is entirely under control without medication (I am Type 2 diabetic). I’ve found that most people who think they couldn’t live without a car only think that because they’ve used a car all their life and can’t conceive of doing things any other way.
Time is Money
According to the Surface Transportation Policy Project, the average American driver spends 443 hours behind the wheel each year. That’s equivalent to eleven forty-hour work weeks, or one-fifth of an entire work-year. Don’t you have something else you’d rather be doing?
When you go car free you’ll be surprised how much more free time you have. It was one of the first things I noticed after getting rid of my car. And it was wonderful.
Of course, when you live car free there will be delays and inconveniences that pop up in place of the many car-related time-wasters you’ll be eliminating. For example, time spent waiting at transit stops and filling out rental car paperwork. But armed with the information and strategies in this course, your car free lifestyle can be time-efficient and cost-effective. And every trade-off will be worth it tenfold.
“The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gas, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering resources for it. And this figure does not take account of the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 15,000 miles: less than ten miles an hour!”
– Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity
Wasted Mental Energy
Cars also waste our mental energy. Every year your car forces you to think through thousands of little scenarios and make endless decisions. This is exhausting. “Is it safe to park my car here?” “Should I fill up with gas now, or drive on and look for a lower price?” “What would happen if I didn’t pay that parking ticket?” “I’m hungry, should I go to the Taco Bell drive-thru?”
When you own a car you also have to remember a lot more stuff. “Did I remember to pay the parking meter?” “I parked on the street, is it street sweeping day?” “When do I need to renew my driver’s license?” “Dangit, where did I park?”
When you don’t have a car to worry about, you’ll have thousands fewer decisions to make and less to remember. Which means you can devote more mental energy to important endeavors, or just relax and give your brain a rest. Either way, it will boost your quality of life.
Car Free Success Story:
Looking not too closely, someone might say that if I drove I’d have more time because it would take less time to drive. They’d be wrong when considering the time they spend feeding their car. Bicycling is the most efficient means of land travel known. That means it takes less time, effort, and cost to travel by bike. Therefore I have more time, effort, and funds for other things. Plus, some of my free/fun time is while biking to and from work. Yippee!
Traffic Congestion
“Once we start widening roads to sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen lanes in each direction, that’s when traffic will start running smoothly.”
– Ellen DeGeneres doing a comedy sketch on traffic – The Ellen DeGeneres Show
Who wants to spend time sitting in traffic? Nobody. But when you own a car, traffic is part of everyday life. According to a 2019 study by the transportation analytics firm INRIX, the average American spends 99 hours each year sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. INRIX also calculated that traffic congestion costs each American driver $1,348 per year.
And traffic congestion is getting worse. In the year 2000 there were 215 million vehicles registered in the U.S. and 213 million licensed drivers. By 2020 that number grew to nearly 300 million registered vehicles and 228 million licensed drivers.
Traffic congestion diminishes quality of life by keeping people from their family and friends and by preventing them from participating in more productive activities or recreation. Traffic jams also lead to a higher likelihood of car crashes, injuries, and death. Traffic congestion causes increased fuel consumption, engine emissions, greenhouse gases, and smog. And sitting in traffic leads to stress, frustration, and road rage.
In an online poll, readers of Washingtonian magazine voted overwhelmingly that commuting was their single largest waste of time. A study of urban traffic congestion by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute estimated that traffic jams cause 6.9 billion hours of travel delays for U.S. drivers every year, and 8.7 billion liters of wasted fuel. The estimated the total cost of traffic congestion in the U.S. at $160 billion annually.
The Worst U.S. Cities for Traffic
New York
Boston
Houston
Los Angeles
Washington, D.C.
Dallas/Fort Worth
Chicago
Atlanta
Detroit
Seattle
Car Free Success Story:
For as long as I can remember, my father would commute thirty to forty-five minutes each way to work. I remember him always complaining about the traffic and how it put him in a bad mood and made him cranky and tired. Sitting in his car for that long beat him up mentally. When you’re tired from a day of work and a long commute, it’s hard to muster up energy to do things with the family.
So, from a young age I saw that sitting in traffic was less than desirable. Most people buy homes in the suburbs because they can get “more house for the money.” However, what they’re saving in house cost, they’re almost spending in gas money and wear and tear on their car. So, I moved to within one mile of work. I could go on for hours about the advantages. Like no longer having to plan my day around commuting and traffic, sleeping later, and having more free time. Now, I’m home in five minutes. It’s so common for people to make excuses why they don’t want to live closer to work. In my mind it’s about quality of life, plain and simple. The less you sit in traffic, the better your life will be.
The Vox documentary below illustrates another problem caused by cars. When too many cars cause traffic jams, cities and counties invariably build more roads and widen highways in an attempt to alleviate the traffic. But ironically, this just attracts more cars. The only solution to traffic is convincing fewer people to drive.
Health Concerns
Traffic jams can do more than just put you in a bad mood; they can ruin your health. According to Dr. Karol E. Watson, MD, PhD, director of the UCLA Center for Cholesterol and Hypertension Management, “Heavy traffic has been shown to produce a high degree of stress which could be a catalyst for stroke and heart attack. A stressful commute coupled with high blood pressure may be a dangerous combination for morning commuters.”
The hallmark of car addiction is a sedentary lifestyle. A 2004 study by the RAND Corporation, the nation’s largest independent health policy research organization, found that sedentary suburbanites are more likely to suffer chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, asthma, headaches, diabetes, migraines, urinary tract infections, back pain, and obesity. The co-author of the study, Dr. Deborah Cohen, said, “To improve our health the study suggests that we should build cities where people feel comfortable walking and are not so dependent on cars.”
Interior Air Quality
But at least your car seals out the toxic exhaust emissions from other cars as you’re driving down the highway, right? Wrong. A study by the California Air Resources Board found that exposure to air pollution may be up to ten times higher inside vehicles than in ambient air outside. Dr. Alan Lloyd, CARB chairman said, “We’re learning that people’s highest daily exposure to air pollutants may be during their commute to and from work.” The study also concluded that engaging a car’s air filtration system, or closing its air vents, did little to lower pollution levels inside the vehicle.
Watch this fascinating video about interior air quality. The host drives around with an air quality monitor and measures the level of carcinogenic pollutants inside and outside the car. Scary.
Crash Risk
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration there were 5.25 million motor vehicle crashes on U.S. roadways in 2021. More than two million people were injured in those crashes, and 42,915 people died.
Car crashes are the leading cause of death among children and young adults. Past U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said the problem of highway deaths is a “national epidemic” and costs society $230 billion a year, or about $820 for every American citizen.
“Life happens between empty and full.”
– Ad copy from a Phillips 66 gasoline commercial
The Federal Highway Administration estimates the total cost of every traffic crash which results in at least one fatality is $2.9 million. That cost includes: property damage, medical expenses, lost wages, emergency services, administrative and legal fees, travel delays, workplace costs, vocational rehabilitation, pain, and loss of quality of life for the injured. The average cost of a car accident with minor injuries is $13,900. A crash resulting in disabling injuries can cost nearly $1 million.
“More than twice as many people have died since 1900 in U.S. car collisions as have been killed in all the wars in U.S. history. It is a heavy toll from a conflict largely overlooked: the war waged on us by the car.”
– Katie Alvord, Divorce Your Car
Just watch your local morning news traffic report for a few days and you’ll understand how common serious automobile crashes are. On any given morning there are likely to be a half dozen accidents with injuries on your local news. The more you drive, the more likely you are to be involved in a crash.
The chilling part is the way crashes are described in the radio traffic reports. “Injury accident on 405 north near the Getty is blocking the two left lanes; you might want to take 101 instead.” Lives have been altered forever, but never mind; you just need to know how to avoid the delay.
Car Free Success Story:
There aren’t many real dangers in modern life, but commuting at high speed on a congested highway is one. And it affects one’s emotions; it is deadening and stressing. I could have improved my work situation had I commuted an hour in heavy traffic. I gave it thought but decided against. My health is more important.
Road Rage
It is nearly impossible to collect accurate statistical data on the number of road rage incidents. But a study of 11,120 drivers by the website RoadRagers.com found 38 percent of people admitted to getting into confrontations with other drivers. Seventy-eight percent admitted to using obscene gestures while driving. And 60 percent felt that “all other drivers are complete idiots.” A survey conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found 60 percent of people felt that unsafe driving by others is a major personal threat to their families.
So what leads to road rage? According to the NHTSA, “Many psychologists blame the intoxicating combination of power and anonymity provided by motor vehicles.”
Car Free Success Story:
I live in Los Angeles, California, where I’m the director of online sales for a small company. I’ve been completely car free for five years. I made the choice foremost because owning a car is increasingly costly and frustrating – traffic congestion, taxes and fees, smog, parking. Plus, time spent in cars is of very low quality because of social isolation, separation from the environment, and the low sensual quality of most road and highway infrastructure.
In stark contrast to that, living car free is liberating, exhilarating, helps you meet more people, and creates greater social interaction. Life without a car is more varied, rich, and intense. And you have more sensory, intellectual, and social stimulation.
You also stay thinner, look better, have a lower heart rate and higher endurance. I also eat better, fresher food because I shop at a local farmer’s market. I find I can get 95 percent of everything I need within a short bicycle ride. If I wanted to, I could rent a car every weekend and still come out way ahead.
I have all the friends I did when I had a car, and new ones too. But unlike my friends who drive, I go to more places and do more stuff than anyone else I know because I never worry about parking problems.
Advice: just commit yourself to it and it becomes easy.
Noise Pollution
Automobiles are the primary source of noise pollution in cities. Noise pollution can cause sleep loss, headaches, stomachaches, increased blood pressure, degenerative hearing loss, and compromised immune system function. It can also have a damaging economic impact by lowering property values. Noise pollution makes conversation difficult and reduces human interaction.
A noise level of about 85 decibels can begin to cause hearing loss. A hairdryer typically runs at about 75 to 90 decibels. City automobile traffic ranges from about 80 to 100 decibels.
The article below from SmartCitiesDive.com cites a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report about the debilitating effects of noise pollution caused by traffic. The article states, “The problem doesn’t just have implications for hearing loss; the UN group cites growing evidence that traffic noise exposure is a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular and metabolic disorders.” Read the full article by clicking on the image below.
Animal Casualties
An estimated one million animals die on U.S. roadways every day. Automobiles harm wildlife in other ways, too. According to the Humane Society, the most serious threat to wildlife in the U.S. is habitat fragmentation caused by road and highway construction. Fragmentation forces animals to live in areas too small to meet their basic needs for food, water, shelter, and finding a mate.
Sprawl
The Sierra Club defines sprawl as, “irresponsible, poorly planned development that destroys green space, increases traffic, crowds schools, and drives up taxes.” Suburban sprawl devours one million acres of forest, farmland, and open fields every year. Sprawl spreads out homes, schools, and amenities, which makes people drive more and spend more time in their cars and away from family. According to the Sierra Club, people who live in sprawling suburbs drive three or four times more than people who live in dense urban areas.
Sprawl is costly. Instead of spending money and tax dollars to improve existing communities, sprawl forces tax dollars to be spread thin building new roads and new schools and to fund new police and fire districts. And sprawl is self-perpetuating; more traffic leads to the widening of highways and new road construction, which in turn leads to more development, more cars, and ultimately more sprawl.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) produced a quick video titled “Urban Sprawl: Pushing Our Cities to Their Limits.” Check it out, and visit OECD.org for more information.
Car Free Success Story:
Overall, living car free is easy. It just takes planning. I have a lot less stress in my life because I don’t have a car. Driving is very frustrating. But for some reason people accept that. When I rent a car I’m reminded just how awful and nerve-racking it is to drive.
Why Pay All That Money for All Those Problems?
To summarize this lesson, cars waste our money, waste our time, squander our mental and physical energy, force us to sit in traffic jams, deteriorate our health, and cause us to risk serious injury and death every day. Why pay all that money for something that causes so many problems?
To be fair, when you live car free you will incur some expense, some risk, and some waste, but only a tiny fraction of what’s created by owning a car. If you can live without a car it can not only change your financial life for the better, it can change your whole life for the better.