The car is not the future: On the myth of motorized freedom

Summary

The Car Is Not the Future: On the Myth of Motorized FreedomI’ve always felt uneasy about the idea that owning a car is somehow a default requirement for adult life. It’s not just the cost or the maintenance, it’s the deeper realization that cities, economies, and even social expectations are built around the assumption that you’ll drive. Growing up, we were sold the idea that cars meant freedom. Freedom to move, to explore, to escape. But in practice, the promise feels more like a trap, paved with traffic lights, gas bills, and endless parking lots. But it wasn’t always like this. What if the car's dominance was a choice, not a necessity? In the early 20th century, streets were shared spaces: places where people walked, gathered, played. Automakers reshaped public perception with propaganda, blaming pedestrians for getting hit. It worked. Streets became something to fear, not share. As explored in The Forgotten History of How Automakers Invented the Crime of Jaywalking, the word jaywalking itself was a propaganda tool and streets eventually, surrendered to cars entirely. Automakers, faced with public backlash from pedestrian deaths, needed a scapegoat. So they blamed the walkers, not the drivers. The sidewalk became your lane; the street belonged to the car. This redefinition of public space went hand in hand with policy and infrastructure changes. Highways sliced through neighborhoods, parking lots consumed city centers, and transit funding was gutted. What’s more, this car-centric worldview made its way into our laws, our habits, and even our sense of freedom. Today, to live without a car in many places is to opt out of participation in basic civic life. Cities that have experimented with removing traffic signals, as shown in What Happens If You Turn Off the Traffic Lights?, found that people actually behave more cautiously and accidents often decline. You see something similar in one of the boldest infrastructure experiments of the 20th century: Sweden’s switch f...