120 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
120 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
AntiCaR
|
||
|
||
by
|
||
|
||
Reclaim the Streets Network
|
||
|
||
Dear Motorist,
|
||
Large pieces of metal hurling around at high speed are
|
||
danger to life & limb. How does society tolerate the annual
|
||
slaughter of 5000 people a year in Britain, & a million globally?
|
||
Why do hit and run drivers not get the publicity of serial
|
||
killers. Their victims are just as dead. Politicians will dismiss
|
||
a rise in crime as 'mostly traffic offenses', whilst becoming
|
||
apoplectic about car theft and joy riding. A single death in a
|
||
rail crash is headline news, meriting a public enquiry and
|
||
resignation of ministers, whilst the most horrific of motorway
|
||
pile-ups hardly worth a mention in the press.
|
||
In India the cow is a sacred animal to which motorists must
|
||
give way. Nowhere is the human similarly sacred. The fact that
|
||
we can not cross the road if you are coming is taken for granted.
|
||
Imagine if you had to stop for us would you still spend 10,000
|
||
on a car.
|
||
|
||
5000 slaughtered each year in Britain each year.
|
||
|
||
How would a society of motorists tolerate anything else?
|
||
Cars are considered a form of liberty but the only form of
|
||
liberty they bring is the liberty to kill and maim others. You
|
||
have liberty to go anywhere, as long as there is a multi-storey
|
||
at the end. You have been sold a mere representation of freedom.
|
||
Is it the risk of driving that excites you? Cars are sold
|
||
on their ability to reach dangerous erotic speeds. But you end
|
||
up edging your way through a traffic jam at less than walking
|
||
pace. You have been sold danger without excitement.
|
||
We weep not for you nor the time you have spent working to
|
||
pay for your car and its petrol. We weep for ourselves because
|
||
drunk or sober you are mutilating and killing us.
|
||
|
||
Transformation of city
|
||
|
||
Cars take up so much space, parked and moving. They also
|
||
need workshops to mend them, petrol stations, insurance offices
|
||
& of course hospitals. 23% of London, 44% of Los Angeles is
|
||
devoted to the car. The more people have cars, or rather the more
|
||
money is spent by motorists, the more places become out of reach
|
||
to people who do not have cars; witness the exodus of shops from
|
||
high streets to ring roads. Ironically the machine that is sold
|
||
on its ability to bestow freedom of movement and to cover
|
||
distances actually creates as much distance as it traverses. This
|
||
moving of facilities away impoverishes your life, as you spend
|
||
longer behind the wheel. Our movements are channeled along ever
|
||
restricted paths, we have more and more roads to cross and they
|
||
are ever more busy, smelly, unpleasant and dangerous.
|
||
The final irony is that you can gain no satisfaction from
|
||
all the space that is being generously turned over to your use.
|
||
You do not actually appreciate the space that you pass through
|
||
even though you prevent us from using it; all you do is try to
|
||
pass through as quickly as possible. The more of it there is, the
|
||
more obstacles there are to upset you: other cars. You must hate
|
||
cars even more than we do.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Rape of the planet
|
||
|
||
1 Cars consume vast amounts of raw materials. Mining ores
|
||
carves great open cast scars in the landscape.
|
||
2 The petrol cars need pollutes at its point of production
|
||
and consumption and every point in between: the super tanker, the
|
||
filling station and the engine. Cars use a third of world's oil.
|
||
In OECD countries 40% in 1973, 60% in 1989. Two thirds of cars
|
||
are in G7 countries.
|
||
3 Cars create so much waste. Thousands of used tyres are
|
||
dumped at sea, the rest accumulate in massive dumps. Millions of
|
||
use batteries leak in toxic waste dumps.
|
||
4 Cars are biggest cause of atmospheric pollution and global
|
||
warming. Exhaust fumes make us ill from the nitrous oxides, the
|
||
carbon monoxide and the hydrocarbons.
|
||
5 Lead in exhaust fumes brain damages children. But unleaded
|
||
petrol is higher in cancer causing agents and requires more crude
|
||
oil to be made.
|
||
6 Millions of animals are squashed each year by cars.
|
||
7 New roads carve up the countryside.
|
||
|
||
We will stop you
|
||
|
||
Car ownership is not as universal as it pretends. In UK 35%
|
||
of households have no regular use of a car, 48% in 1970. There
|
||
is very little overlap between those who hate cars and those who
|
||
control media. We have no big lobby groups. But we are organising
|
||
and taking action. Organizations such as the Pedestrian Freedom
|
||
Front & Society for Cutting Up Motorists have formed. The thing
|
||
that is so infuriating about cars is what make them so
|
||
vulnerable: they are everywhere.
|
||
Many car haters are turning their hatred into playful
|
||
actions. Cyclists blocked the M42 in 1991 by cycling between the
|
||
cars when jammed up and refusing to move. In Brighton cars were
|
||
misdirected to the outskirts by protesters in shiny jerkins. Much
|
||
of this action has grown out of more people becoming aware of
|
||
links between profligate overcomsumption and environmental
|
||
degradation.
|
||
|
||
Resistance does not only take form of road blockages.
|
||
Your car is your alienation. Is communication possible? Must we smash your
|
||
windscreen; break through to you and tell you that there is a world out here?
|
||
We want to reach out to you and gently lift you out of the car. Before we pour
|
||
petrol on the seat and set it alight. By petrol it was brought to life and so
|
||
by petrol it shall die. So don't say you have not been warned.
|
||
|
||
Footnote: People often confuse three separate environmental problems:
|
||
1) the greenhouse effect, which is caused mainly by CO2, which is emitted by
|
||
cars. CFCs also contribute.
|
||
2) ozone depletion in upper atmosphere, which is caused by CFCs.
|
||
3) low level ozone smog, which is generated by sunlight acting on car fumes.
|
||
Reproduce this text at will. It was ripped off from a PFF pamphlet (PO Box
|
||
406, Stoke On Trent, ST1 4RN) by the Broad Leafed Collective (Don't look for
|
||
us, we will find you).
|
||
For more anti-car info contact Reclaim the Streets Network. 071 737 0100.
|
||
|
||
|