Nerve 24 - Car Space

Car Space

I was walking down one of the city’s busy dual carriageways recently when I noticed a car halted in the left hand lane. It had neither pulled over to park nor had it stopped at a pedestrian crossing.

As I drew near to the motionless vehicle the reason for its having stopped became apparent. A blind man’s assistance dog was relieving itself in the middle of the left hand lane directly in front of the vehicle. Both man and dog safely returned to the pavement a moment later. Mercifully, this first vehicle to encounter them mid-carriageway refrained from the usual indignant horn blowing and associated road rage indulgences and waited patiently for nature to take its course.

Dominating and dangerous

These days there can be few, if any, people unaware of the grave effects of motor vehicles. As a result of this seat belt wearing is compulsory, 20mph speed zones are materialising more frequently and fossil fuelled transportation emissions are discussed for their significant contribution to climate change and poor air quality. Less commonly considered are the impacts of motor vehicles on very specific areas of health such as the rise in cases of the eye disease macular degeneration and the prevalence of high blood pressure. Even the escalation in diagnoses of autistic spectrum disorders has been linked to pollution from cars.(A) Motor vehicles are lethal.

There is however another problem with motor traffic. This concerns the issue of space. Motor vehicles commandeer vast amounts of space in the form of area given to roads and car parking allocation.(B) In so doing they cast life forms as obstacles and, less obviously but no less deleteriously, they malignly encroach even into psychic space.(C)

Obstacles

So multitudinous are motor vehicles now that whole streets are coated with their hefty forms constricting both the roads as well as the pavements when parked. Despite traffic jams and delays being caused by an excess of these toxic hulks occupants of motor vehicles are more likely to regard ‘slow’ cyclists as a cause of their restriction.(D) As their domination of space has increased so too has their propensity to treat others as obstructions. If one (erroneously) believes that motor vehicles have priority on the road then pedestrians and cyclists become an impediment to the commandeering of that space. George Monbiot describes his experience as a motorist; “…the car had colonised my soul, shutting me off from other people, forcing me to see them only as obstacles.” (E) The irony is that motor vehicles are an obstacle to themselves and each other.

Being expected to cross a road only at designated points significantly reduces the space permissible to non-motorised forms of locomotion. From a conventional point of view the man and his dog I encountered were committing a serious error. Foregoing a permitted crossing zone and remaining in a supposedly non-permitted pedestrian area were audacious acts indeed.

Implications on exterior and interior space

“The dull apathy of existence now…is the loss of vivid life on the streets; the gossip, the encounters, the heaving messy noisy day that made room for everyone, money or not.”(F)
Jeanette Winterson’s apt lament indicates the effect of a dwindling public arena for activity that was once taken for granted in this country. Opportunity for interaction that might sustain healthy communities has been severely eroded by the constant threat of motor vehicle incursion. Things must have become particularly bad when residents resort to displaying their own notices pleading with motorists to cut their speed for the sake of the local children.(G) Children’s inability to play together in the street is just one of the more sinister erosions whose repercussions may be felt for many years to come.

So much space has now been lost to the motor vehicle that even our very homes have succumbed. David Engwicht cites research by Donald Appleyard in 1970s San Francisco that demonstrates how people living in streets with heavy motor traffic flow have suffered a dramatic loss of space. Besides losing ‘home territory’ (which includes front gardens, the street and beyond) many people on heavy motor traffic streets reported abandoning their own front rooms to escape the din and general discomfort excessive motor traffic imposes.(H) Throttling even the interior of home space is the culmination of a particularly severe dominion.

Engwicht claims that drivers slow when they no longer perceive the street as their sole domain and has many suggestions for reclaiming space from motor vehicles. Examples include: placing old lounge chairs in parking spaces; hanging banners on the edge of the pavement (this visibly narrows the road and encourages speed reduction); leaving up decorations from a street party; displaying banners and sculptures (e.g. a brightly painted children’s tricycle) on parked cars or in parking spaces; decorating store dummies and leaving them on the pavement or in the street; erecting overhead banners (this assists with the visual enclosing of a space); holding a barbecue in the street; placing an aviary in the street; converting a trailer into a mobile garden and painting road murals.(I)

To return to the anecdote; both the man and his dog as well as the motorist demonstrated contrary behaviour which needs to become commonplace if the reapportioning of space is to occur in urban areas.

Conclusion

One dimensional attempts to reduce motor vehicle speed, for instance, do not get to the heart of the issue with this method of transportation. “The car system steals the street from under us and sells it back for the price of gasoline. It privileges time over space, corrupting and reducing both…”(J) For an improved quality of life we should act to transform this domination into a demise.

References

A) For example; BBC News, Road Noise Link to Blood Pressure, 10th September 2009; BBC News, Pollution Ups Blood Clot Risk, 13 May 2008; Autism and Air Pollution: The Link Grows Stronger, TIME.com healthland.time.com/2012/11/27/autism-and-air-pollution-the-link-grows-stronger/#ixzz2l6ddAGXf and www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/26/us-traffic-pollution-autism-idUSBRE8AP16020121126
B) For example, cars use 70 times more road space than walking to move each person. David Engwicht, Street Reclaiming – Creating Liveable Streets and Vibrant Communities (New Society Publishers 1999), p.22.
C) Engwicht, op cit, pp.15-17.
D) Mighk Wilson, Bicyclists, Motorists and the Language of Marginalization, http://www.bicyclinglife.com/EffectiveAdvocacy/Marginalization.htm
E) George Monbiot, Goodbye Carmageddon, The Guardian 15 September 1999.
F) Jeanette Winterson ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’ (Vintage 2012) p.88.
G) Seen by the writer on a Toxteth street in January 2014.
H) Engwicht, pp.15-16.
I) Engwicht, op cit, pp.88-109.
J) The London organization "Take Back the Streets" quoted in Wilson, Bicyclists, Motorists and the Language of Marginalization.

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