A friend recently became the President of the Calgary chapter of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). I am a strong proponent of MADD, checkstops, designated driver programs, etc. because they save lives.

However, focusing on drunk driving is like focusing on drunk shooting ("Shoot responsibly" and "Don't drink and shoot") or mixing alcohol with other drugs ("Shoot up responsibly"). Those who are rightly concerned about traffic deaths due to drunk drivers, are actually concerned about traffic deaths, period. Some automobile deaths are undoubtedly caused by drunk driving. The rest are just caused by driving.

Worldwide, the equivalent of the whole city of Calgary is killed every year due to automobile accidents. It's worse than murder and war together, worse than malaria, worse than suicide. We're just finished MOvember, the annual funding drive for ending prostate cancer, but prostate cancer kills less than a quarter the number of people killed by automobiles. Where's the funding drive for finding alternatives to cars?

Focusing not just on the human deaths, what else do cars do? Injure people, obviously, not just directly but indirectly by discouraging exercise and promoting obesity. Kill animals. Pollute the environment, not just the air from exhaust but air and water from the mining and oil production required to build and support them. Encourage urban sprawl. Increase noise. Trigger foreign wars to secure access to fuel. If cars weren't so damnably comfortable and convenient, we would long since have banned them.

The fight against drunk driving is just a skirmish in a much bigger battle. We got along for a million years without cars; we don't actually "need" them. We've simply made the mistake of building cities for cars, and then wonder why it's hard to live in such cities without one.

Steve Hansen Smythe, November 2012