It’s estimated that 25 to 50 per cent of wars are related to access to oil – and motor vehicles guzzle up about half of the consumption of the fossil fuels used in the world. Cars drive in traffic in Tehran on Dec. 27, 2024.Majid Asgaripour/Reuters
Early on New Year’s Day, a 42-year-old man drove a pickup truck at high speed down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 15 people and injuring scores of others.
The incident, which made headlines around the world, is just the latest “vehicles as weapons” attack.
It was a brutal reminder that trucks and cars can easily be repurposed into deadly weapons by those with nefarious purposes. These attacks are also hard to prevent because motor vehicles are ubiquitous.
But, beyond terrorist attacks, we shouldn’t forget the casual violence motor vehicles inflict upon society daily.
About 115 people a day die in motor vehicle collisions in the U.S. – a total of 42,514 in 2022, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Another 2.4 million drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists were injured in crashes in the U.S. that year.
We don’t see them mourned or memorialized as “innocent victims.” There is nary a mention in the media of this continuing carnage.
Nor do we consider the economic costs of motor vehicle crashes – an estimated US$340-billion in the United States alone.
Worldwide, the annual death toll from motor vehicle crashes is about 1.35 million (including 500 children a day) – that’s one death every 24 seconds – with another 50 million people injured annually.
Canada recorded 1,931 fatalities and 118,853 injuries from motor vehicle collisions in 2022. Those are just the directly measurable injuries to individuals.
The emissions of vehicles also contribute to asthma and cardiovascular disease.
Hours spent behind the wheel in a sedentary fashion helps explain why obesity rates are at an all-time high. The stress-inducing time spent in traffic is certainly not good for our mental health.
The damage wrought on the planet by our car dependency is as bad if not greater. Trucks, cars and motorcycles, and the infrastructure they require, are a major contributor to climate change, deforestation, pollution and even war. (It’s estimated that 25 to 50 per cent of all wars since 1973 are related to access to oil – and motor vehicles guzzle up about half of the consumption of the fossil fuels used in the world.)
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, motorized vehicles are one of the leading causes of climate change, accounting for 23 per cent of global-energy-related CO2 emissions. Seventy per cent of direct transport emissions are from automobiles.
But tailpipe emissions are just one part of the problem. About 85 million new vehicles are manufactured each year – adding to the nearly two billion already on the planet – and almost as many old ones end up in junkyards.
Production of vehicles requires considerable mineral extraction and energy. Between two and three billion tires are produced annually, made principally from fossil fuels, and are not biodegradable. All of this, as well as the operation of the vehicles themselves, contributes to air, water and land pollution.
Vast swaths of land are razed to build highways, byways and suburbs, contributing to deforestation and declining biodiversity. It’s estimated that car-related pollution and climate change kills about 370,000 people a year globally, and that toll will only grow.
Cars and car-related spaces like roads and parking lots dominate modern urban life, and it’s causing harm on a large scale.
Vehicles are also getting bigger and more menacing. A pickup truck weighs about three tons, making it a weapon of choice for vehicular terrorism. Cities have made efforts to try and thwart attacks like the one that occurred in New Orleans. Bollards are now an integral part of urban landscapes, especially near pedestrian zones. Anti-vehicle obstacles are an integral part of new developments.
If only we acted as swiftly and broadly to address the larger harms caused by motor vehicles. Instead, we reject initiatives like traffic-calming measures and car-free school zones as too much of an inconvenience.
Mind you, the tide is shifting. Some of the great cities of the world – Paris, London and New York – are pushing back against car domination. They are introducing congestion tolls to reduce the sheer volume of traffic, and installing decent cycling infrastructure.
Other cities, like Toronto, are going backward, ripping up cycling lanes. The province is also promising more (congested) roads instead of better public transit. But they will, no doubt, be installing more bollards.
Let’s not forget that, until there is a profound cultural shift, trucks and cars are and will remain efficient weapons of mass destruction – and more so because of our willful blindness to their health impacts than acts of terrorism.