Hailey Miles ENGL 1102 Ms. Jessica Camargo March 26, 2014 Cars: Whats The Big Deal?

One day my grandfather started to talk about life back in the old days before he bought his first car. I started to think about how hard was for them to even get to school and wondered how some people are still living that way today. Third world countries do not have the technologies that we have today. People are still walking to work and school. Then the people with cars are not regulated and cause thousands of crashes every year. How much does our lives differ from those in third world countries and how much of our transportation system do we take for granted? In the United States most citizens have personal cars and those who do not usually live in cities and use a public transportation system, walk or bike to work. Even though most of Americans own cars only about percent of the world owns cars. This is a number most people do not believe I personally have no idea how it feels to walk to the store or school, so I asked my Grandfather what it was like for him before he had his own personal mode of transportation. There was a lot of walking, he said, They did have school buses so we didnt have to walk to school when we were older. He went ahead and talked about how his family had to grow most of their own food since going to the market was near impossible. Also, how his father had the only car in the neighborhood so he drove his neighbors to the store when needed. Even the births in the family were all at home since the drive to the hospital was too far away. Growing up in this type of environment my grandfather was used to living without personal transportation so

when he was older he lived without a car until he was married with a child on the way. This is the mentality that Third World countries have toward cars, you cannot miss something you have never had. Third-World countries have adapted to serve people without transportation by using mobile facilities. These cars and truck are designed to bring services to people in rural areas. The purpose ranges from food services to sexual education and health care. These trucks can reach hundreds of people that would be impossible without them. Most of the roads in developing countries are mostly dirt paths that have been walked down by the natives. This provides another issue for the truck operators and limits the people that can be reached with these trucks. The long walking trips to the markets and water facilities have contributed the decrease in cooked meals and nutrition levels in the natives. As a result of this more intense farming techniques have been implemented, which has increased the deforestation rate making the walk to obtain firewood for cooking and warmth longer. So, no matter what way it is looked at having no transportation is a losing situation. As Americans we do not realize how easy we have it. Everyone in the world could not live like Americans or we would have been depleted the earth of its nutrients, but I do not think we should take what we have for granted. People die each day in developing countries from exhaustion and malnutrition from not being able to reach the nutrients they need to survive. As Americans our standards of living are high which makes us oblivious to what is going on in the world around us. The United States have been using cars for over a century. The automobile was first made affordable by Henry Ford in 1908. Since then the government has regulated the safety features as well as the road that these cars are driven. These car being around for so long Americans have

learned to take transportation for granted making them dependent. This realization has made authors like bestseller Chris Balish write books like How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save Money, Breathe Easier, and Get More Mileage Out of Life. This is a book created to teach an American how to survive in the United States without cars. He talks about how using public transportation and carpooling can put hundreds of dollars back in your pocket. I think it is good that people are trying to decrease their impact on the world now that they understand how much we use from the earth to create these cars and use to power them. It is also sad how it had to be presented in a financial way for Americans to try and change their ways. Most people grow up with cars and even get their own when they turn sixteen; this type of upbringing has made us forget how hard it is to live without transportation. If the oil supply was to run out I seriously doubt that any of us could deal with walking to school or work each day. Maureen Mackey, twenty year senior editor for Readers Digest, approaches the subject by highlighting the time that is wasted using cars. Like the fact that the average American will spend around sixteen weeks of their life stuck in traffic and people that live in Charlotte spend an average of forty hours in traffic each year. Her solution for this problem was for more Americans to make the move to big cities and eliminate the need for personal cars. I think this is unrealistic no one will move their family to a crowded city just to escape an hour of traffic each week. Not to mention how congested the cities would be if everyone that worked in them lived there. It is best to acknowledge that cars are an extremely important part of our survival and try to make steps toward lowering your contribution to the emission problems. Life if completely different when it comes to owning your own car or walking ten miles to the nearest market. The purpose of this paper was not to guilt people into giving up personal transportation, but to help inform people of the real problems with transportation in developing

countries. The privileges that are associated with being an American are sometimes overlooked and prevent us from seeing how blessed we are to live in this country.

Works Cited "Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999 Motor-Vehicle Safety: A 20th Century Public Health Achievement." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (1999): 369-374. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.

Automobiles. Greatest Achievements of the 20th Century, 2003. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.

Balish, Chris. How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save Money, Breathe Easier, and Get More Mileage Out of Life. California: Ten Speed Press, 2006. Print. Ellis, S D. Key issues in rural transport in developing countries. Transport Research Laboratory. Overseas Development Administration. PDF file.

Mackey, Maureen. "Life Without Cars: The New Un-American Dream." The Fiscal Times 4 Apr. 2012. Print.

Miles, Walter. Personal interview. 28 Feb. 2014.