If anyone walking along the sidewalk were to make
deafening noises, spew poisonous gas into innocent faces, and
threaten people with a deadly weapon, they would be arrested. Yet a
few feet away, on the public roadway, it is considered normal
behavior.
– Steve Stollman, a cycling/pedestrian advocate
in New York City, quoted in Divorce Your Car! Ending the
love affair with the automobile
Katie
Alvord wants to get you out of your car. In her new book, Divorce
Your Car! Ending the love affair with the automobile, Alvord spells
out the ecological, personal and social reasons to split up with
the automobile.
She offers nuggets of humor –
chapters called “Not a Cheap Date: The real cost of cars” and “Play
the Field: The spice of transportation variety” – mixed with
thousands of facts. If you don’t already feel guilty about the
pollution spewed into the air or the animals killed on the road,
Alvord makes sure you know the thousands of other reasons to walk
out on this machine-dominated relationship.
“Maybe you’ve had problematic cars in your
life,” she writes. “Before my first car divorce, at least three
passed through mine. There was the Dodge camper-van whose engine
caught fire and left the interior coated with black soot. There was
the Renault LeCar with a mystery problem that reduced its gas
mileage to about half of what it should have been. There was the
blue Volkswagen bug whose air-cooled motor failed so often we ended
up changing engines on the side of the road the way most people
change tires.”
To order the 305-page paperback
book, which sells for $17.95, call 800/567-6772 or check out
www.newsociety.com.
Copyright 2000 HCN and Beth Wohlberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Take a walk.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
