My car can kill you
Cars have been killing people pretty much since they were introduced. Mary Ward was killed in 1869, thrown from a steam-powered car built by her cousin. The first gas-powered car was introduced by Benz in 1886 and pedestrian Bridget Driscoll had been struck and killed by a vehicle only a decade later. In 2021, 7,500 pedestrians were killed by cars (the highest number to date). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projected that 42,915 Americans (roughly the population of Arlington, Massachusetts) were killed in car crashes in 2021.
It would seem hard to package this violence in any palatable way. But America persists. In a country steeped in violence, we’ve made the violence of cars the point.
Murder has always been legal in America. Prosecutors decide what murder is, after all, and murder seems to fall along socioeconomic and racial lines. Who is murdered? And who is just a victim of a terribly violent circumstance? In the case of cars, we’ve decided: cars are innocent.
The news has taken cars to their bosom giving them the same thought-terminating treatment given to so-called “officer-involved shootings.” Search “pedestrian hit by car” on any news site to see what I mean. The car hit the pedestrian, but there was no human hand involved as far as the headlines are concerned. (The example I linked to above, published on the 5th, features the charming headline: “Pedestrian hit by car in Walton County stable, all lanes open.”)
Recently we’ve gone a step further. The “just asking questions lobby” (of which most of the news media is apart) will tell you more than half the country is rabid for fascism but the facts don’t bear this out. But onto fascism we march, nevertheless. In 2017, Heather Heyer was murdered, a vehicle was the weapon, at the fascist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. The response from the political class was overwhelming: protect cars.
In the wake of 2017, several states attempted to pass laws which made running over people with your car a non-offense. Most of these bills failed, but right-wing politicians keep attempting to pass them. The exception is Oklahoma which granted immunity in 2021 to anyone who attempts to kill or actually kills a protestor who is “attempting to flee.” You and your car have been deputized for state-sponsored violence.
Even if the bills don’t pass, they still have an effect, shifting the window of acceptable behavior. In 2020, there was a spate of car-related crimes with angry car owners running over protestors throughout the United States. In 2021, in North Carolina (which had a failed kill-people-with-your-car bill in 2017), a jury declined to prosecute a man who was videotaped running over Black Lives Matter protestors standing in a crosswalk.
As lawmakers protect murderous car drivers, car companies create larger and larger killing machines. Part of the reason pedestrian murders are at an all-time high is due to the size of American cars. As a woman under 5 feet I need no one to tell me the height of the Ford F-150, but this thread of a man who is a foot and two-inches taller than me (6’ 1”) standing next to new make cars should make the point for me. Here’s a preview of writer AJ LaTrace standing next to a GMC Yukon.
Despite the rising pedestrian fatalities and injuries, the federal and state agencies related to car safety have done nothing to prevent the onslaught of large vehicles from hitting the market. CNBC claims America is “hooked on big cars,” but, if that is true, we were also “hooked” on not having seatbelts until Wisconsin mandated their inclusion in cars in 1961.
I am of the firm belief (having been born to a woman who sold advertising time) that most of American culture is communicated via advertising. Advertising stands at the center of between the desires of capital and the reality of what the populace will find acceptable. No one releases an ad hoping it connects with no one. Therefore, it made me shudder with revulsion to see this VW ad.
The ad features a jerk of a guy—nothing terrible—just kind of a jerk, walking around town. He looks at his phone the whole time. He is not run over when crossing against the light, even though the ad implies you’d like to. “Cars built with safety in mind, even for those guys,” the voiceover says, when the car jolts to stop instead of killing a man. (It should be noted, the man was in no way a jerk to the drivers. He failed to open a door for a man on crutches, walked past a postal worker picking up dropped mail and laughed loudly near a couple on a park bench. None of these, to my mind, are murder-worthy offenses.)
The ad sells you on the inherent violence of the car, promoting your lack of violence towards pedestrians both as a safety bonus and a gesture of kindness. You could run over this man, but—because you’re just the sweetest—you won’t. It is a sign of largesse. It is a mark of good manners.
As we slide closer and closer towards the oncoming climate crisis, power (in all its forms) is embracing violence. This violence serves a number of purposes. As long as we continue to be interpersonally violent, we won’t have time or energy to work collectively on the problems which we all face. Increased violence, also, inures us collectively to the mass death we’re likely to see in the coming decades, as the world’s population is plunged into natural disaster upon natural disaster. But also, violence sells (and without any of the potential warm feelings that sex may evoke).
If car companies can get the same deal as gun manufacturers (“I love my Chevy and my gun more than my wife”), we won’t be just loathe to give them up. We’ll be rabid at the suggestion. How could you take away my vehicle, the only object between me and the violence that could be inflicted by it? How could you ask me to sacrifice this thing that separates me from the teeming masses? If we can continue to put a plate of glass between us and those passing in front of our car, we can feel separate from them. Collective action prevented by the smug safety we experience from behind the wheel of a 7,500-pound vehicle.
Sources not linked above:
The story of Mary Ward
Car history timeline, Library of Congress
“17 August 1896: the motor car claims its first life,” MoneyWeek
“These states have introduced bills to protect drivers who run over protesters”, CNN
“Pedestrian deaths in U.S. reach highest level in 40 years,” PBS NewsHour
“Newly Released Estimates Show Traffic Fatalities Reached a 16-Year High in 2021”, Department of Transportation
“A Seatbelt History Timeline,” AAA
“State-level Republicans are making it easier to run over protesters,” Vox
“Protesters hit by cars recently highlight a dangerous far-right trend in America,” NBC News
“Safety Study: SUVs, Pickups More Likely to Hit, Kill Pedestrians When Turning,” Kelley Blue Book