Comment 26819

By schmadrian (registered) | Posted October 03, 2008 at 08:53:50

Not exactly sure what your elephant in the room is, but mine is the automobile culture we have created (and by extension, the trucking industry). The fact that the car is arguably at the center of North America's value system. It built an economy, it takes up the lion's share of advertising (at the very least, tv advertising), and this reality speaks volumes about our society.

But back to the thrust of the article; never mind the dollar values, check out the stats for automobile casualties. Roughly 40,000+ in the US, and 3,000+ in Canada. Yearly.

And this is, essentially, accepted. It's regarded as an acceptable situation.

So roughly 45,000 people each year die in traffic accidents in North America. Can you imagine any other aspect of life having this level of risk being 'accepted'?

We live in a world where the car -and driving- takes precedence over just about everything. No worse punishment can be imposed, it would seem, than to take away someone's right to drive.

Cars and pollution and environmental concerns and the economy have become a front-and-center discussion. But really, it's the wrong discussion. It's a moot one, actually.

Unfortunately, a paradigm shift away from this is almost impossible. (No, the answer is never going to be rapid transit. But that's a discussion for another time.)

This, to me, is the elephant in the room.

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