My favorite "Buy Here Pay Here" promotional picture.

Last year, Ken Bensinger at the Los Angeles Times wrote a three part series exposing some of the business practices of these dealerships that create extra hardship for disadvantaged car buyers.  This year, he has continued to follow-up on the issue as these bills were introduced and begin to move in the legislature.  Here is a brief explanation of each piece of legislation:

A.B. 1447, Introduced by Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-LA)

A.B. 1447 would actually change three parts of the business strategies of Buy Here Pay Here dealerships.  First, dealers would be required to post the selling cost of the vehicle on the body of the vehicle.  This would prevent dealers from setting prices at the negotiating table based on their estimate of what the seller could afford.  The legislation also prohibits Buy Here Pay Here dealers from hasassing references for the buyer after the sale, requiring cash payments in person from drivers and disabling and tracking cars with GPS systems of payments are late.

“This industry preys on people who have no other options for getting a car,” said Feuer.  “In many parts of our state, auto travel is the only way for parents to get to work on time, or to pick their kids up from school.  Instead of helping Californians get back on their feet by providing needed transportation, these dealers are promoting an endless cycle of debt and joblessness.”

Critics of Feuer’s legislation either argue that instead of passing laws to regulate the entire industry the state should focus on supporting existing laws or that the law is written so broadly that it applies to legitimate car dealerships who include LoJack with their car sales.  Bensinger talked to several opponents in his piece for the Los Angeles Times on A.B. 1447.

S.B. 956, Introduced by Senator Ted Lieu (D-LA)

Senator Lieu’s legislation focuses on the lending practices of the dealerships instead of the car sales.  By handling financing in house but being licensed as a car dealer, Buy Here Pay Here dealerships were able to get around many state financing laws and consumer protections.  Lieu’s legislation would:

• Impose regulations on dealers offering Buy Here, Pay Here installment loans by requiring them to obtain a California Finance Lender’s license, which would provide consumers with an array of protections.
• Limit used-car installment loans to a maximum 17.25 percent interest, which would give California the strongest cap in the nation.
• Change the way Buy Here Pay Here used car dealers are able to repossess vehicles to include grace periods and make it easier for buyers to reinstate a repossessed car.

“Unscrupulous dealers are pushing these types of previously unregulated loans to sell cars for far beyond market value, at interest rates as high as 30 percent,” explains Lieu.  ”They need to either find a conscience or display a sign: Rip-offs R Us.”

Representatives of the industry are arguing that Lieu’s legislation will make it difficult for dealers to sell to people with bad credit.  To here their argument, read the bottom of Bensinger’s article on S.B. 956.

A.B. 1534, Introduced by Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont)

Wieckowski’s legislation seeks to reduce the amount that dealers would mark-up their vehicles by arming buyers with information outlining the real value of the vehicle.  A.B. 1534 would require dealers list a value for the car based on a third-party valuation source, such as Kelley Blue Book or the NADA Guide.  The value would take into account the car’s model year, condition and mileage.  While it would provide knowledge to the buyer, it wouldn’t place any restrictions on what the car could be sold for.

This legislation is receiving the same argument from Buy Here Pay Here representatives, that any restrictions on their industry will reduce people of lesser-means’ ability to have access to a car.  It’s also receiving some more credible blowback from dealers worried that the wording of the law would require all dealers of used vehicles to be constantly updating stickers and signage to reflect the new prices.

The automobile industry is expected to weigh in on all three pieces of legislation, but all three bill authors remain optimistic that some legislation regulating this vampire industry will make it to the Governor’s desk.  That’s the value of having a paper with the reach of the Times shine the light on an industry that is doing more harm than good, no lobbying effort will ever be able to turn that light back off.

Metropolis II, a kinetic sculpture of a futuristic city by artist Chris Burden that will soon start operating for view by the public, raises some interesting questions about the role of cars in cities.

I saw the sculpture, with its elevated roads wrapping around skyscrapers and other structure, sitting still when I visited the museum over the winter break. It might be worth checking it out in action to see 1100 toy cars and 14 train sets whiz and wind their way through the buildings. Metropolis II is a cool contraption and interesting piece of art, like a matchbox car track, erector set, and lego city mashed together and pumped up to gigantic size.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to burden such a nifty assemblage with political or planning baggage. But the sculpture’s prominent position in a major museum is drawing lots of attention to the work and the possible future it represents.  The artist’s comments about Metropolis II place it in line with some earlier visions of a vertical, car-dominated Los Angeles that had real influence on the shape of the city today. And I think what Peter Plagens wrote about art critics engaging in urbanism when he reviewed Raynar Banham’s influential book Los Angeles: the architecture of four ecologies, still applies:

” if he wanted to run out and paint pictures of the Roller derby or the Stones it’d be O.K. because it’d be innocuous …  But when you get into architecture it’s big casino, real people’s real lives … and here we go with another strangling round of MacDonald’s, freeways, and confectioners’ culture palaces.”

In a YouTube video showing the nearly completed work, Burden commented: “I love hearing that the cars are going 230 miles per hour. That makes me feel very hopeful for the future. That’s about the speed they should be running. Not 23.4 miles an hour, which is what my BMW says I average driving around LA.”

Whether or ultra-fast robot cars are part of our future, when I saw the sculpture, I was reminded of plans from the 1930s to weave urban freeways into downtown Los Angeles by elevating them above local traffic and running them through buildings.

In 1937 the Automobile Club of Southern California conducted a survey of traffic in the region and blamed gridlock on the mixing of types of car trips (through trips vs. people on local errands pulling in and out of businesses and curbside parking); and the mixing of cars and pedestrians and streetcars and other vehicles on streets. “The solution of the problem of providing adequate facilities for through traffic will be found in providing a network of traffic routes for the exclusive use of motor vehicles over which there shall be no interference from land use activities.”

The club recommended construction of a network of what we would today call freeways connected by cloverleaf interchanges; the gradual replacement of curbside parking with parking lots and structures; the replacement of streetcars with  buses; and the construction of elevated roadways in downtown Los Angeles that would allow cars to drive rapidly over local streets and right through the 3rd floors of buildings. Looking back, it’s interesting to see how much of this vision was realized. This is partly because, when the federal Aid Highway Act was passed in 1956,  federal, state, and local officials had  to grapple with the question of how a new interstate system could interact with already existing cities. Traffic engineers had been playing with concepts of where to site and how to construct fast, grade-separated roads in cities for twenty years.  Through their influence in state transportation department they were able to dominate the design and construction of urban freeways, to the detriment of urban life to this day.

Some of the worst urban freeways in the United States were constructed elevated above surface streets. Although none bore through office buildings as conceptualized by the Auto Club, what is key is that futuristic visions of cars swooping through cities (especially the Futurama Exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair) captured the public’s imagination and influenced major infrastructure projects for decades to come.

I hope that kids who see Metropolis II today are inspired to go home and build neat stuff, but don’t buy into the idea that a cool urban future requires faster and faster car traffic. To flip the 1937 recommendations I quote above on its head, the solution to many of our urban problems will be in providing good places and land use activities over which there is less interference from traffic. The task for today’s imaginative child, and for all of us, is to imagine and experiment with places with fewer and slower cars. So, by all means, check out Metropolis II. But also go see and play with artist James Rojas’ interactive model of Long Beach and think about how we shape the city and how it shapes us.

Maybe Kia could have been just a little less transparent about marketing cars to kids than this Super Bowl ad from last year. Photo: AutoEvolution

While the choked parking lots at many suburban high schools might mislead you, young people today are less interested in driving and owning cars than their counterparts in previous generations. This is happy news for environmentalists and complete streets advocates, who see fewer vehicles on the road as key to a healthier, wealthier society. For the global auto industry, though, it is an existential threat not to be ignored.

Generation Y’s reluctance to embrace car culture may be temporary, reflecting merely the tough economic times, especially for those burdened with college debt. But studies show teens now maintain connectivity through the internet, not though cars, and teen driving rates have been in steady decline since the late seventies. So young people’s lack of interest in driving may presage a more fundamental shift in how we connect with other people, where we choose to live and work, and how we construct our identities. Either way, the auto industry isn’t taking any chances. Here are just a few tactics car makers are employing to take back the future.

Ratcheting up marketing to kids. Marketing cars directly to children pays off big for car companies even though they won’t be driving or buying their own for years. American children in particular hold real sway over family purchases: more than half of parents surveyed by JD Power said their children had meaningful input in choosing the family vehicle.

Children also carry into adulthood the brand awareness that marketing creates. Many adults own or still lust after their childhood “dream car.” So, in the 1990s, preschoolers started seeing ads created for them on shows like Blue’s Clues. And the Kia Sorento ad with toys whooping it up on a Vegas joyride, the Town and Country ad in which kids on a sidewalk envy kids riding by in the minivan, and the VW Passat ad starring that achingly cute boy dressed as Darth Vader are a few of the growing slew of commercials targeted at children as much as their parents.

Traditional ads are only part of a marketing mix that increasingly includes social media, which can cut parents out of the loop and get kids marketing to each other (one early successful product launch using social media had young people passing virtual BMW keys among Facebook friends). At the local level, Ford dealers have teens recruiting potential car buyers in return for money for their high schools.

Going Urban. Young adults have reversed the trend their parents set by showing their preference for living in cities rather than suburbs — and the car industry means to follow them there. The iconic advertising image of the lone vehicle winding through a stunning wilderness is being replaced with that of a car traversing a gorgeous or gritty cityscape.  Once solely the backdrop for certain luxury vehicles, the city now provides the setting for ads hawking entry-level cars such as the Ford Fiesta, Kia Soul, and Fiat 500.

Better Living Through Car Ownership. Other types of marketing geared toward wooing young urbanites back to car culture are perhaps more insidious. To co-opt young people interested in urban issues, efforts are underway such as “Future Mobility Now”, which “is inviting Europe’s brightest young talent to get involved and have a say on the big issues facing the transport industry.” This initiative, funded by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, held a conference this summer at which Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche gave the welcoming speech to Gen Y “delegates” who considered such leading questions as, “How can cars and transport help us lead better lives?”

Caring about sharing. Car-sharing, whether cooperative or commercial, arose as a way to reduce car ownership and increase mobility options for people who don’t need or want to own a vehicle. It remains to be seen if it will deliver on its potential to cut down on traffic, pollution, and household debt now that the automakers have decided to turn this potential threat into an opportunity.

Through its recent partnership with Zipcar, Ford is bringing its sedans and SUVs to college campuses across the US. The company’s stated goal is to allow students to “experience” its “latest fuel-efficient vehicles, while helping them reduce their cost of living and help relieve congestion on campus.” While this sounds terribly noble, the battle for advantage in a slow-growth market could well be won this way. It’s no surprise that on the heels of Ford’s deal, GM announced it was teaming up with peer-to-peer network Relay Rides.

And there’s always the chance that this driving “experience” could lead students to view ownership of these vehicles, loaded with connectivity and luxury, not as future needs but immediate wants. Undermining the social good to come out of car-sharing may not be the industry’s purpose in entering the market, but they’ll surely benefit from this potential side effect.

Auto industry leaders, it seems, take young people’s disinterest in a car-dependent lifestyle seriously. Advocates for other transportation options should also be inspired to push even harder for smarter planning, better transit, and greater safety for cyclists and pedestrians. Demographics may seem to favor change, but a deep-pocketed industry is determined to turn that tide, and they’re just getting rolling.

Anne Lutz Fernandez, a former investment banker and marketing executive, is co-author, with anthropologist Catherine Lutz, of Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on Our Lives.

My take on proving a solution to this problem would be to create a communal car pool system.

Photo: I Go Cars.

Large corporations are the only companies that I am aware of that have formed and utilize carpools to gain tax credits for both the employee and employers.  Employees use this incentive to save on their gas expenses and parking fees while employers utilize it gain another tax shelter.

If families or community participants can pull their money together set up a “Cundina” or “Tanda” which is interest free way of saving money (it is their own money.)  This systematic lottery is very common in Mexico and seems to have started in Puebla Mexico in the late 1800′s modeled after Chinese workers came to Mexico with the “Hui” a communal rotating credit association.  This practice has crossed and spread over to other communities across this country.

Here is how the cundina works:  A group of trusted friends / family members / neighbors get together decide on a leader, which will be in charge of the collection and distribution of money.  The group decides on the amount of money to be collected and how often the pot is awarded (each week, month or other pre-arranged time frame.)

It starts by each participant pulling a number which is written on a piece of paper that has been placed from a bowl, a hat or a box.  The amount of numbers are determined by the amount of participants, if there are ten participants for example the numbers will range from one thru ten.  The person who pulls number one gets the first distribution of funds, then number two the next time and so on.

If twenty participants join with $25 a week and the payout is each week would be $500.  Each week, every participant will pay $25 to the leader, and once the leader has received payments from everybody for the pre-determined given period, he’ll give the money to the person who’s turn it is to be paid, then the process repeats until very member receives their money.

An article that appeared in the LA Times many years ago was on a group of local Korean merchants that met once a month in Koreatown.  The merchants were part of their neighborhood watch group and will meet monthly at a restaurant with $500 in hand. One month at a time, each used the $2,500 to buy a ham radio so team members can communicate while patrolling their neighborhoods.

A solution may be to start a condina and utilize the money to purchase a communal vehicle and insurance amongst its participants and start a communal carpool system within these communities.  It will be their money, their insurance and available for them to get to work and back.  They can start another condina for $10 a week to sustain the maintenance and gas for the vehicle as an example.

There are many challenges with this model, but like in any new concept there are always challenges.  The more obvious are you need to have a trusted group that will follow thru on making the payments.  Next is to determine perimeters how the vehicle will be utilized and where will it be housed and maintained.

This model can also be established to purchase communal bikes or purchasing bikes for everyone within the groups and working prearranged discounts from local bike shops.

When we learn from our predecessors and use our communal strengths to evolve ideas for the betterment of our community, that is when true out the box solutions can be achieved to change our circumstances.

The motion submitted by Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Mitch Englander for city staff to draft a motion that would exempt car dealerships from city business taxes applies only to new car dealerships, so our concerns about providing incentives for “Buy Here Pay Here” car dealerships to move to the city are alleviated.  Streetsblog still has some concerns with the proposal, but it’s good to know that one unintended consequence that we raised yesterday is off the table.

To reduce the inequity of low-income people being trapped by usurious loans because that’s the only way they can get a car, we need to prioritize improving the places we live in so no one needs to own a car to survive. While places are changing, we should also be improving public transportation and opportunities to walk and bike. Making our lives less auto-dominated will take time, so in the short term we can provide ways to share rides so less people are chained to buying and paying for a car.

There are already places with enough of a mix of homes and businesses and ways to get around that a resident doesn’t need to own a car. Since these places already exist, we should prioritize allowing more people, especially lower income people, to live there. So we need more housing and more affordable housing near job centers and in walkable neighborhoods.

Much of the development that happened in the past 70 years was designed around automobiles. We need to densify and ‘repair’ suburbs in urban areas and revitalize towns in rural areas to transform more places into walkable areas.

From a policy perspective this means:

• Eliminating zoning restrictions on the lot sizes, types of housing, number of housing units on lots, building height etc to increase the stock of housing and reduce price of renting.
• Eliminating mandatory parking minimums to reduce the cost and space needed to expand housing and services,
• Eliminating zoning rules that prevents mixed use neighborhoods.
• Encouraging construction of affordable housing.
• Ending all government subsidies for exurban development and sprawl (new road construction, extension of utilities, tax breaks or mortgage deductions for construction/ home purchases in greenfield developments, etc).

Good, walkable places require safe streets for pedestrians; cycling infrastructure that welcomes all types of riders, and expanded transit. Build streets and public places with the human scale in mind, and give priority to walkers when it is not possible to give space to all forms of transportation. Invest in separated bike infrastructure so more people feel comfortable biking to work, to shop and to school. This means cycletracks, bike highways and bike paths, not painted lanes or sharrows. Expand transit service and reduce cost of transit to low-income riders. It’s socially and environmentally efficient to tax wealth and pollution to subsidize public transportation.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for hometown pride. I was born about 60 miles downriver from the Motor City in Toledo, Ohio, a town sometimes known affectionately as “Little Detroit.” I remember when it was considered treasonous to drive a foreign car.

That’s the brilliance of these ads. They appeal to our inner urge to root for the underdog, our nostalgia for simpler days. Those flashes of a grand-looking Woodward Avenue. The water tower that proudly shouts “Birmingham, Michigan.”

It’s also very telling, the commodification of Detroit. It says something about Americans’ new-found fascination with cities — the same fascination that has inspired many young entrepreneurs who are working to reinvent Detroit.

But Chrysler is selective about the Detroit it celebrates. Absent is the ruin that now accounts for a large share of the city. Invisible is the crushing poverty, constantly present in the urban landscape. The driver in the most recent installment, traveling out from the center of Detroit to its suburbs, is in control of his fate (thanks to his snappy ride) in a way few in the region really are.

Despite the defiant sentimentality of its ads, Chrysler, as well, is selective about its commitment to the city of Detroit.

Chrysler's suburban office park isn't the kind of setting that inspires award-winning ad campaigns. Photo: Bobgray2011.com

If the man in the commercial were a Chrysler employee, we wouldn’t see him pulling out of a downtown parking garage. In the 1990s, Chrysler traded its headquarters in Highland Park, a tiny urban enclave nestled within Detroit’s borders, for a new suburban office park in exurban Auburn Hills.

Chrysler’s decision was by no means remarkable for the Detroit region, where job sprawl is more the rule than the exception. Only seven percent of the region’s total jobs are within three miles of the urban core anymore. You can make a strong case that sprawl, more than de-industrialization, is responsible for the city’s decline.

Meanwhile, Highland Park has never been able to replace the tax revenue that Chrysler’s employees delivered. In the last 20 years, the city has shed half its total population. Now, local officials are going to extreme measures to weather the recession. They grabbed headlines nationally last week when they decided to stop illuminating streetlights in order to save $4 million.

But who could blame Chrysler for trying to cash in on Detroit pride. After all, “Imported from Auburn Hills, Michigan” just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?

Villaraigosa at the L.A. Auto Show in 2010. It's ok, we know you're only smiling because you're daydreaming about the CicLAvia you had ridden in the month before. Photo:Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images North America via zimbio

Picture this.  One day one of the most important political figures in the city stands in front of a major Downtown attraction and announces that train service to this attraction will be increased dramatically in the coming weeks.  The next day, a major political figure, flanked by an up-and-coming political star and the City Council President, stands with the head of the local automotive dealer lobbying group and announces a political proposal to end business taxes for car dealerships.

In most parts of the world, that would be a sign of a hot political campaign with two candidates offering competing visions for a city’s transportation  future.  In Los Angeles, it’s just two days in the life of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.  While car dealerships are praising the Mayor’s proposal, supporters of green transportation options are puzzled by today’s announcement.

“This city can’t take too many more of Mayor Villaraigosa’s ‘business friendly’ policies,” writes Alex Thompson, President of Bikeside. “The guy extends Metro hours one minute, and decides he wants more car dealerships the next.”

Earlier today, Villaraigosa, Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilman Mitch Englander stood toe-to-toe with the car dealership lobby and announced a plan to end local business taxes for car dealerships operating in the City of Los Angeles.  The plan makes sense from a short-term economic point of view.  Auto dealers produce substantially more sales tax than business tax. In 2010, auto dealers accounted for only $3.6 million in business tax revenue but $29 million in sales tax revenue.

But the three pols see a potential sales tax boom if they can convince the car dealerships that have fled the city for Glendale, Pasadena, and Beverly Hills to come back.  Since 1986, the City of Los Angeles has lost 95 auto dealers. If those 95 dealers were still operating within the City limits, Los Angeles would have an additional $57 million per year in sales tax revenue.  In addition to the new tax proposal, Villaraigosa also announced that Beverly Hills Porsche is moving from Beverly Hills to Los Angeles.  The Mayor’s Office of Economic and Business Policy helped to persuade Beverly Hills Porsche to come to Los Angeles by pulling department directors together and speeding the permitting process.

“For too long, LA’s business tax has driven auto dealers outside the City limits,” said Villaraigosa.  ”It’s time to reform the way we tax auto dealers so that we can bring more jobs and more sales tax to our City.”

Before Villaraigosa can sign a law exempting new car dealerships, the City Council would first have to sign off on a yet-to-be-drafted ordinance before the Mayor could sign the proposal into law.  Garcetti and Englander will introduce a motion asking city staff to draft such an ordinance at tomorrow morning’s City Council meeting.

Garcetti and President Bill Clinton check out the engine in the trunk of a mostly electric car. Photo:CalCars.org

The public relations blitz to attract new car dealers was timed to come in advance of the LA Auto Show which takes place from Nov. 18-27 in the Convention Center.  Unfortunately for anyone looking to score political points off the exemption, it also comes a week after the Los Angeles Times decimated the Buy Here Pay Here used card industry which preys on poor people desperate for a car by trapping them in a cycle of debt and car dependency.  I’ve asked the Mayor’s office if their proposal would include used car dealerships and Buy Here Pay Here dealerships, but have yet to hear back from them.  An unintended consequence of this proposal could be to bring more of these vampire lenders and car dealers to the city further impoverishing those of lesser means and decimating the tax base of those already underemployed.

If the proposal doesn’t include tax exemptions for used car dealerships, then the Mayor and Council face accusations of providing tax breaks for businesses that only benefit top wage earners and not those selling products to the middle class.  And what about the message this sends the transit dependent who have already seen massive service cuts and fare hikes in recent years?  Subsidies for a Porsche dealership but fare cuts for the transit dependent?  And if will subsidize car dealerships, how about bike shops and footwear companies?

“If I had to speculate, I’d guess the Mayor’s economic development team haven’t talked with his transportation team, so one hand has no idea what the other is up to,” Thompson continues.

For their part, Garcetti and Englander pushed the idea that eliminating the tax on car dealerships is really a first step in eliminating the business tax altogether.

“Having owned a small business in Los Angeles, I know how difficult it is for them to get by,” writes Englander. “Every dollar makes a big difference. Eliminating the gross receipts tax is a crucial incentive that can help bring new businesses to Los Angeles and help existing businesses stay and thrive, create jobs and breathe life into our economy. Eliminating the gross receipts tax for new car dealerships is the perfect first step because they generate so much sales tax revenue and jobs.”

“It’s time to stop surrounding cities from using L.A.’s broken tax system to lure businesses and jobs away from us,”writes Garcetti. “Targeting car dealers is a big first step. But we must eliminate the business tax all together. L.A.’s costly and cumbersome tax scheme is one that taxes businesses even when they lose money. If we’re going to get our economy back on track, it’s simply got to go.”

Because taking advantage of people of lesser means is patriotic.

In the third part of the three part series, Bensinger and the Times recommend finding ways to make car ownership more affordable for people of lesser means.  Not wanting to dismiss this solution without a better one of my own, I asked a group of people who regularly appear on Streetsblog as authors or as sources in our stories for their thoughts and solutions.

The narrative is what you would expect, that subsidizing car ownership (or further subsidizing car ownership) is not the answer that’s going to make vampire industries that prey on the poor’s transportation needs go away.  We had a burst of good answers, many of which are outlined below.  Full articles by Occidental College Professor Mark Vallianatos and Eastside Bike Club Founder Carlos Morales will be published tomorrow and Thursday.  Some of the other answers are summarized below, and full text of these answers can be found here.

Joe Linton, Streetsblog Board Chair and CicLAvia consultant: Many public subsidies to reduce the cost of owning a car are already in place: from free parking to subsidized gas to huge public investments in expensive car-centered infrastructure (and those are more direct subsidies – there are externalities like environmental and health care costs that are caused by and not paid for by the driving public.) No Los Angeles driver today ever pays the real cost of their driving. They’re already getting a bargain.

I think that if we’re looking to subsidize transportation in ways that are good for low-income people, it’s better for the public to invest in a balanced system that gives people choices.Subsidizing transit, walking, and bicycling will yield mobility that’s affordable for all and accessible to all. If low-income people have many viable choices, then they are less at the mercy of loan-shark car dealerships.

Roadblock, Midnight Ridazz “organizer” and Neighborhood Council Member: I sent a letter to the Times asking to know which broken down underfunded city agency Ken Bensinger expects to absorb the increased cost of road maintenance and traffic gridlock when the surge of hundreds of thousands of (taxpayer subsidized) 4000lb pavement destroying machines hits the roads as a result of the proposed “cars for poor people” program?

I suggested that Instead of proposing a program that destroys public infrastructure, it’s time to seek ways to reduce wear and tear on our roads and actually produces a better ROI since the gas supplies little to no funding for infrastructure in our cities.

Adrian Martinez, at NRDC Switchboard: We have to question whom the current transportation accommodates.  The third article mentions that the Department of Transportation spent $71 billion this fiscal year on roads and bridges, $22 billion on public transit and more than $8 billion on rail projects.  In places like Los Angeles, where our clogged freeways are known internationally, why do we continue to funnel billions of public dollars into projects that either A) benefit solely private industry like the freight industry or B) do not accommodate efficient and diverse transportation options for residents?

Damien Goodmon, Director of Citizens Campaign to Fix the Expo Line and Crenshaw Subway Coalition: Six words: Implement the Get LA Moving plan.

Allison Mannos, Former Director of LACBC’s City of Lights Campaign and staffer with LAANE: I would just say how important it is to increase bus headways in these low-income neighborhoods, especially the ones that connect them to job corridors, say, Wilshire.

My favorite "Buy Here Pay Here" promotional picture.

For more than a century, efforts to help the disadvantaged have focused on education, healthcare, nutrition and housing. Almost nothing has been done to help the working poor afford cars, despite research that indicates it would help alleviate poverty.

About 1 in 4 needy U.S. families do not have a car, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. That’s a serious handicap for the millions of Americans who don’t have access to robust mass transit.

Oh, so close to getting to a sustainable solution, so close.

Let’s be clear.  It’s a national disgrace that we don’t have the transit system, urban density, zoning codes, community plans, affordable housing and everything else that would reduce car dependency among those earning the least. There are a lot of people fighting for those things, but in the meantime it seems callous to argue that one be forced into a horror story of a commute everyday just to get get to their job, especially if that commute takes them away from children who need them.

But with all the problems that America’s car-culture has wrought, I find it impossible to believe that more car-ownership is even a short-term solution to the problem.  What is a short-term solution?  I’m not sure yet, but maybe we can figure something out together.

Next week, Streetsblog will publish our own mini-series, a response to the Times’ series that ran this week,  focusing on what is the best solution to the causes that create a market for Buy Here Pay Here car dealerships.

Have your own idea? Leave it in the comments section.  We’ll do some sort of investigation of any serious idea that’s left.

It's official. Southland residents are sick of sprawl and massive highway projects. Source: Key Findings from Recent Southern California Survey on Transportation and Land Use Planning

Even as Los Angeles embraces an expanded transit and bicycle program, the rest of Southern California is still pictured as a sprawling wasteland of highways and subdivisions.  However, that’s not what the people that live in the Southland want according to a new survey released by Move L.A., the American Lung Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council.  Instead, Southlanders want the kind of dense mixed use development and short commutes over McMansions and sprawlways.

The survey, completed by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates, shows that voters in the six county region served by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) overwhelmingly support expanding and investing in transit over investing in highways.  Even when voters backed highway spending, there was more support for a “Fix It First” approach than funneling more money into mammoth road expansion projects.

“If Southern California voters were in charge of our transportation plans, the region would look very different,”Amanda Eaken, NRDC’s deputy director of sustainable communities, added. that “Voters understand what so many studies have told us: widening roads will not solve traffic congestion. Instead, designing communities that increase our mobility and freedom — helping us to get out of our cars — is what will ultimately solve the problem.”

The survey was released just days before SCAG is scheduled to vote on the region’s Long Range Transportation Plan this Thursday.  The SCAG Region encompasses six counties: Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura and Imperial, 18 million people and 38,000 square miles.  Organizations such as the three who commissioned this report and the Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership have lobbied SCAG officials and testified at public hearings helping to create a far more progressive transportation plan than SCAG has passed in the past.

Move L.A. has analyzed the plan and offers support for its passage:

While the plan is good and seemingly signals that a new era is dawning in Southern California — one which could result in more housing and transportation choices for residents — the question is whether SCAG’s Regional Council will endorse it

Even so, the citizens of the SCAG region are well ahead of their elected leaders when it comes to a progressive transportation vision.

Many of those 18 million people are tired of the long commutes, tired of the endless highway spending, and anxious for a new way of looking at transportation.  Survey respondents were asked to imagine they were in charge of their region’s transportation budget, and to allocate a hypothetical $100 budget across five spending categories. Their responses indicate they would like to see a significant majority of the region’s transportation dollars allocated to expanding and improving public transportation and providing more bike and pedestrian infrastructure. While voters would allocate about 25 percent of funding to repair and maintain existing roads and highways, they would allocate less than 20 percent of the budget to expanding roads and highways.

Let’s just say that while the SCAG plan is a significant improvement over the current plan.  The 2008 RTP calls for a $1.8 billion investment in bikeways over 30 years while the 2012 draft calls for $6 billion.  However, the 2012 plan is allocating less than half of the 14.1% for bicycle and pedestrian projects that residents would allocate left to their own devices.

“Voters prioritize expanding public transportation as the most effective means of reducing traffic congestion and air pollution,” said Denny Zane, executive director of Move LA. “The findings also show that voters would prefer living in communities that are walkable and mixed-use even if this means living in a smaller home.”

Streetsblog will have an update on the Regional Transportation Plan after its passage on Thursday.

If there’s a better example of the completely debilitating impact our car culture has on America’s poorer communities, I can’t think of a better one than the “Buy Here Pay Here” used car dealership industry highlighted by the Los Angeles Times in a special series running this week.  The first piece in the series, “A Vicious Cycle in the Used Car Industry” ran in this morning’s paper with follow-ups coming tomorrow and Wednesday.

Desperate to avoid multi-hour (or just downright impossible) transit commutes, less affluent workers get taken in by a “Buy Here Pay Here used-car” salesman who offers a loan at a ridiculously high rate of interest to purchase a beater car.  If the person can’t make all the payments, the dealer forecloses and looks for another victim after reaping thousands from the previous customer.  If the person can, they end up paying tens of thousands of dollars for a car worth tens of hundreds.  The dealership escapes oversight by being both the seller and lender and falling into an industry that is mostly unregulated.

While “Viscous Cycle” is full of pretty horrifiying statistics, reporter Ken Besinger also spends time on some of the individual stories that put a face on the tragedy.  The first story is about a single mother in Hawthorne who declared bankruptcy, so the dealership couldn’t come to her house and take the car, so they tricked her into coming back to their lot where they parked the car in with other vehicles with her children trapped inside.  The story also features a less traumatic, but still horrifying, story of a dealership that apparently has math problems, having people who don’t speak English sign English-language contracts that mis-represent what they are actually paying.

And of course, the entire process aims at taking people of lesser means’ lower income away from them.  The Times notes:

“Their credit is so bad they can’t even get subprime financing, and they’re going to be stuck in that hole for years, unable to get out,” Schwarz said of Buy Here Pay Here customers. “That’s the profile.”

While the Times’ story focuses on the villains and victims in the story, a villains list includes a lack of federal and state regulations; thus far they are avoiding the planning and policy causes that contribute to this situation.  The housing market doesn’t support low-income housing near many of the places where lower income workers can find jobs.  The transit system is not adequate to provide for low-hassle long distance commutes.  Funding transit, especially transit for people of lower income is low priority for too many decision makers.

There’s a lot of things that can be done to relieve some of the horrors wrought by the “Buy Here Pay Here” car industry, but the real long-term solution is to find ways to reduce car dependency for everyone, but especially those that can least afford it.

Anne Lutz-Fernandez and Catherine Lutz have written about a similar issue at our Capitol Hill Streetsblog almost one year ago to the day.  We’ll cover each of the next two installments in our “Featured Headlines” section.

GM pulled its offensive ad that tried to depict biking as uncool in response to complaints from bicycling advocates, but they’re still running this ad, showing what a drag it can be a pedestrian because cars will ruin your day. (Best just to get your own car and ruin someone else’s day.)

A GM spokesman said that they listened to the complaints they received about the bike ad and “there are changes underway.”

“The content of the ad was developed with college students and was meant to be a bit cheeky and humorous and not meant to offend anybody,” said Tom Henderson. “We respect bikers and many of us here are cyclists.”

But the hell with you, pedestrians! Sucks to be you, out on the street getting exercise and sunlight and not sitting in a two-ton steel bubble!

We renew our call for the GM marketing department to get with the program already.

Does reality suck?  Apparently to General Motors.

Yesterday, the company’s year old advertising campaign to college students received a fresh round of scorn yesterday as Bike Portland published their most recent print advertisement, found in the Daily Bruin and heaped on loads of scorn.

But here’s the thing, just like State Farm’s Humiliated Cyclist ad campaign, the meaning of the advertisement is open to interpretation.  I see the ads as cleverly disguised apologies for the damage wrought by America’s Car Culture obsession aided by General Motors’ advertising and lobbying activities.

Image via the Daily Bruin via Bike Portland

A UCLA undergraduate who lives with her parents because of family debt partially caused by decades of car payments, stumbles wearily out of the house. Her Dad insists that he drive her to her first class in the morning, even though they live in Westwood. So the two walk to the car parked on the sidewalk in front of her house and they head off to class. She keeps the window rolled up to avoid the air pollution created during the morning rush hour on Westwood Boulevard. Just as she thinks, “Reality Sucks, I never should have given up the bike I road in high school for this crap,” (stopped pedaling to start driving…) a cyclist pulls up. She gives him her best come hither smile, but the poor cyclist is tired of being sexually harassed because he’s constantly exercising so he pretends not to see her. Besides, he’s running a little early today because he needs to finish the Model Street Manual encouraging healthier streets published by the Luskin Center for Innovation before he can read the most recent update on UCLA’s Be a Green Commuter Blog.

But not everyone agrees with this interpretation.  The Social Cycling Austin Facebook site has also re-imagined the advertisement.

Other advertisements in the campaign take a firm stand against bus service cuts that cause overcrowding and apologize to pedestrians for drivers that are gigantic assholes.

Via GM's Reality Sucks website

She gets out of the car and waves goodbye to her father.  As she stands at the intersection of Westwood and Le Conte, waiting for her turn to cross one of L.A.’s innovative Scramble Crosswalks, a passing car driver spills some of his Big Gulp on his lap causing him to lose his concentration.  As he veers towards the pedestrian area, he regains control of his vehicle but not before splashing a puddle all over the helpless pedestrian.  ”Reality Sucks,” she thinks again.

Exhausted and wet from her “relaxed commute,” she stumbles in to the campus coffee shop .  As she enters she notices the cyclist who scorned her earlier before zipping past the congested traffic to campus is walking out on his way to his urban planning class.  But then she spots a familiar face, her friend Ellen, across the way.  She sits down and asks, “what’s up?”  But Ellen has had a hard morning herself.  Her commute hasn’t been the same since Metro was forced to cut 30% of its bus service hours because of a decline in federal and state subsidies.  If only the government hadn’t wasted all that money on Cash for Clunkers, Car Industry Bailouts or decades of subsidizing freeway and road construction.  ”Reality doesn’t have to suck,” Ellen says as she imagines a greener alternative to the status quo.

Have we missed any images or other parts of the campaign?  Send any images or text to damien@streetsblog dot org or leave them in the comments section.

This banner appeared over the I-10 briefly on Saturday morning. L.A. without cars? It was kind of nice. Photo: Jonathan Weiss

There are two theories to transportation engineering and traffic.  One theory is that traffic is like a raging river.  If you block it in one place, it will flow someplace else.  If you add more space for it to flow, it will flow more smoothly.  This theory has dominated traffic and transportation plans for years.

This theory got kicked in the shins over the last weekend.

The other theory is that people make choices based on what they believe makes the most sense at the time.  Under that theory, if you spend a disproportionate amount of resources building and expanding highways, people will drive, even for short trips that could easily be completed on bike or foot.

If you believe the first theory, this weekend’s temporary closure of the I-405, “the most driven highway in the country,” should have been a disaster.  There should have been drivers everywhere stuck on surface streets and gridlock should have clogged up all the freeways as people used their high-tech Waze application to “Beat Carmageddon” by exercising their God-given right to drive wherever they want to.  If you believe the second, then everything should have been fine.

The sad thing is, most transportation planners, especially ones working in Greater Los Angeles, still seem to believe the first theory.  After all, while the city and surrounding area benefitted tremendously from the closure of the 405, the reason the project was closed was so that they could expand the freeway, creating another pipe to flush our car traffic through.

Sig alert.com at 3:47 P.M. on Saturday

Despite all the warnings, media induced panic, apocryphal visions and ABC 7′s constant messaging that we needed to “fight back” by downloading a phone application to help you drive somewhere else; Angelenos made the smart choices this weekend.  In fact, most people seemed to think this was a great weekend, even better and more relaxing than the usual two-day break.  Reporters interviewed more people extolling the virtues of the day and talk about how great the city was with less cars mucking up the system.

The flight path for the Jet Blue flight in #flightvbike flew 145 kms = 90 miles. Thanks, Diane in Toronto.

On Saturday morning, I took a bike ride to Culver City with my son and my Mom and we commented  how it was one of the more pleasant rides we had had on surface streets (without a police escort.)  One Fox L.A. anchor joked that after the re-opening of the 405 “we can all go back to being miserable.”

Of course, I was home in time to watch the now legendary flight v bike (v Metro v in-line skater) race that took place.  If you’re not one of the 20,000 people that visited L.A. Streetsblog this weekend, you can catchup on the story here, here and here.

People keep saying this picture, and one's like it, are "pretty." Yeah, except for the asphalt. Photo: Carter Rubin

While the warnings of the upcoming  Apocalypse were everywhere, the Wolfpack Hustle, Gary Kavanagh, Ezra Horne, Joe Anthony and Jet Blue Airlines gave Angelenos something fun to do on Saturday.  Never have so many watched a “race” on twitter and a webpage with a GPS map.  Thousands were entertained, a city’s spirits were raised, and cycling in Los Angeles was portrayed in a positive light. Did the Carmageddon sub-plot of this race have anything to do with Angelenos leaving their cars at home for the weekend?  We’ll never know; but more than anyone else this unlikely team were the heroes of the weekend.

The silver medal for the weekend has to go to the p.r. team at Metro for doing a masterful job of getting the word out about the closure.  They used every media trick in the book, both old and new, and there was pretty much nobody in the area that didn’t know what was happening.  Whether you thought the coverage was overblown or not, this p.r. team did a great job this weekend and the months leading up to Carmageddon.

The big losers have to be the local media.  From ABC 7′s bizarre campaign encouraging people to download a phone application to “beat” a highway closure and drive wherever they wanted, to their celebratory “We Beat Carmageddon!” coverage on Sunday; it was hard to tell if I was watching local news or the Colbert Report.  Check that, Colbert’s coverage was actually restrained comparatively.

It was particularly painful to watch the evening news on Saturday when every station had a team of reporters spread out throughout the city to tell the same story: that nothing was happening.  Some stations, including one that was specifically warned not to buy into the hype, didn’t have a “Plan B” and didn’t report on any news besides Carmageddon…and there was nothing happening.  The news about the early re-opening of the 405 didn’t come until much later.

While many of the people that appeared on the news were asking when we can do this again, the answer is easy.  People can have a Carmageddon every day that they don’t get in a car.  Ride a bike, clean the yard, walk to the park, everyday provides a new chance to forget the car and do something else.  When enough people do that, the crippling congestion which has grabbed the hearts and psyches of too many people vanishes.

So when’s the next Carmageddon?  There’s no time like the present.  And you don’t need politicians or the media to tell you it’s time, just the desire to be car-light and the beautiful Southern California weather.

Photo: Associated Press

We got your predictions in the thread below, but as the weekend progresses feel free to let us know how/if Carmageddon is impacting your weekend. My first report is that we’re relieved that the news is recharging at the moment so that we have a couple of hours without helicopters flying overhead.

Also, I got a phone call from our friend Sgt. David Krumer with the LAPD asking if I would pass on the word that the LAPD kindly requests that people not try to ride their bikes on the closed portion of the I-405. They know how to read Facebook and Midnight Ridazz guys…Enjoy the weekend, we’ll be back tomorrow with coverage of the “Flight v bikes” race tomorrow.

I’ve had more than enough chances to tell the world my thoughts on what’s going to happen this weekend, the highlight of which had to be when Warren Olney asked Supervisor Yaroslavsky if he thought L.A. drivers were idiots in response to a comment from me, but here’s your chance to make your predictions now.  Carmageddon comes tonight, make your predictions, serious or ridiculous in the comments section.  At 10 o’clock tonight, we’ll add a new open thread for readers to let us know how they’re apocalyptic weekend is going.

Given the hysteria surrounding this minor event, it's hard to tell when people are being tongue in cheek. I think this Facebook group, which is encouraging people to give up their cars for the weekend, is doing that. Photo:Don't Drive Carmageddon/Facebook

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, a rock that doesn’t have Internet service, radio, television, print publications, carrier pigeons, bike message service or regular mail, you’ve been bombarded with messages about how awful next weekend is going to be. You see, to expand the already gargantuan 405 Freeway another lane in each direction, Metro and Caltrans are going to have to close 10.5 miles of said freeway between the I-10 and I-110 from Friday night until Monday morning. The press has dubbed it “Carmageddon.” I have dubbed it “this weekend.”

Why aren’t I concerned? Why isn’t Streetsblog concerned?  Because I have faith that Angelenos aren’t idiots. There are 527 miles of freeway and 382 miles of conventional highway in Los Angeles County. I believe that given the hysteria from the media and politicians in the past months, that everyone pretty much knows what’s going to happen and will avoid traveling the area unless they have to for work or a major event that can’t be moved such as a wedding. Those faced with traveling to those events are smart enough to leave early.

Speaking of the coverage, the entire over-the-top nature of the panic-inducing media assault is revealing about what the elites in this city think of Angelenos. They really believe that a weekend a fraction of a percentage of the local freeway system is closed is going to create a panic. If you contrast their coverage of just over fifty hours of 10 miles of the 405 to their run-of-the mill coverage whenever bus riders lose hundreds of thousands of yearly service hours permanently, it really paints a picture.

Inconvenience drivers of a certain section of road for one weekend. Panic. Cut hundreds of thousands of hours of bus service permanently. Yawn.

Nobody should take our boredom with Carmageddon to mean that we don’t believe that attempts to capitalize on the media-created hysteria to make a point aren’t a good idea. GOOD Magazine’s Alissa Walker is proposing that the City and State commemorate Carmageddon by holding a yearly car-free day. At The Source, Fred Camino argues that Carmageddon should be a symbol that L.A. needs to get serious about true multi-modalism. Last week in an L.A. Weekly article by Gene Maddaus, I made the case that the costs of freeway widenings are much higher than the benefits.

Whatever happens this weekend will paint a picture.  Will the City of Angels and the surrounding county rise up and meet this pretty minor challenge, or has Car Culture gripped the heart of this city so tightly that even the media is right and the most minor of inconveniences is a call for a local apocalypse.

Is this the best way to show your love for your children? Photo: Lafayette County Health

For decades, Americans have been hearing about the dangers of air pollution, much of which derives from our fleet of vehicles. Yet as the body of research has grown, clarifying just how damaging automobiles are to human health and the environment, we’ve persisted in spending an astounding amount of time in cars. As a nation, we drove three trillion miles last year. We have developed responses designed to treat , like keeping children indoors when the local ozone level triggers “code red” or “code purple” alerts. But as a whole, we have not responded to the everyday contamination of our bodies by driving less.

Most of us feel powerless to affect air quality. Many feel trapped by the built environment and unable to cut down on driving. Plenty also see no point in changing their behavior when “everyone else” is going to drive as much as they wish to. It’s unsurprising then that news about pollution is brushed aside—as is news about other ills caused by driving, including crash fatalities and injuries, stress, and obesity.

The UCLA mouse study joined other recent reports that highlight the variety of ways in which remaining overly reliant on the private automobile is self-destructive. But these reports should also make clear that changes in individual behavior can alleviate some of the problems. Here’s just a sampling:

• Sitting for long stretches greatly increases the risk of heart disease – even if you exercise afterwards – according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It may come as no surprise that sitting isn’t good for your health, but what’s shocking is that the raft of articles following the study tended to ignore active transportation while advocating improbable solutions such as standing treadmill desks. What’s more practical than replacing some of our long hours planted in the driver’s seat with walking, biking, or getting by foot to public transit stops?
• While there was some good news in the American Lung Association’s 2011 State of the Air Report, as one commentator put it, it was “like getting a 53 on your math test after you got a 49 on your last one.” Half of Americans live in areas in which air quality is unhealthy. The ALA points out that the elderly, the young, and the sick are most vulnerable to the effects of pollution. And of course some of the sick—such as those suffering from asthma and heart disease—can trace the very causes of their conditions to air pollution.
• The obese are at increased risk of injury in a car crash, according to University of Michigan researcher Jonathan Rupp, and the percentage of the population that is obese is rising. The automotive press presented this as a problem faced by the industry, rather than exacerbated by it. Their answer, of course, is not to encourage more walking and biking but to push for improved safety equipment so that drivers can stay obese and stay on the road.

Meanwhile, auto industry commercials increasingly feature children, suggesting we best show our love for them when we put them into those manufacturers’ cars. But we should reject the self-serving advertising message that time spent with our families in a vehicle is quality time. In fact, the more we drive, the more our own family suffers physically and mentally.

Given that the 40 percent of all trips in urban areas are within two miles of the home and that a good number of us can choose to live closer to work, we do have the power to make our families’ lungs, hearts, brains, and waists healthier, starting today. Let’s make not strapping a child into a car seat a symbolic act of love.

Anne Lutz Fernandez, a former marketer and banker, and Catherine Lutz, an anthropologist at the Watson Institute at Brown University, are the authors of Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on our Lives (Palgrave Macmillan).

It turns out the person driving the car that hit Edith ran a red light. But knowing why Edith died should provide cold comfort: even when we drive with care and precision, cars are far more dangerous machines than we normally give them credit for. Since most Americans use cars with far greater frequency than they use other dangerous equipment, cars put most of us at higher risk of death or maiming than anything else.

Are fancy electronic distractions on dashboards really a good idea? Photo: Redmond Pie

You can engineer cars to be safer, but the safest way to engineer our communities is to make cars less necessary. This is because driving without error is impossible, and the tiniest error made in a car, even one with the latest safety devices, can have devastating consequences.

Until a recent drop in fatal crashes in the US—in good part the result of a recession-induced reduction in vehicle miles driven—the annual death toll had been holding stubbornly at roughly 40,000. Even now, each day about one hundred people die and each year thousands are brain-damaged and wheelchair-bound after being hit by a car, in a car, or both.

Of course, this isn’t to say that many vehicles and roads aren’t safer today, given innovations like air bags and electronic stability control, developments in highway design, and heroic efforts to put an end to driving under the influence.

Still, individually we may not be much safer. For one thing, people tend to take more risks, like speeding and texting, when made more confident by better-braking cars and newly-widened roads. And much of the risk reduction these improvements provide is erased if we drive more miles, something likely as the economy rebounds. Besides, safety technology has just barely kept pace with technology that provides yet more distractions. (This year’s offering? A front seat infotainment system that can find movie listings, tag songs, hold your restaurant table, and provide a hot spot for five laptops).

The media and automakers, however, persist in holding out the promise that cars will someday drive themselves, eliminating human error, or be so engineered that drivers will walk away from crashes unscathed. To enter any of this season’s auto shows is to step into this imagined future. Vehicles that park themselves or alert the driver when a vehicle sits in the blind spot are already available. But the idea that a car system free from danger is around the bend is, unfortunately, a pipe dream.

It seems like it should be more than a dream. After all, American technological progress is the guiding hand of our history, giving us moon walks and internet surfs. But here’s the rub: vehicles of the future will still need humans to build them. In 2010—the future dreamed of by the drivers of decades past—vehicle recalls spiked above 20 million, the third-highest since recordkeeping began.

And even if we do get cars that “talk” to each other and warn of an impending crash and “road trains” that speed traffic along highways, we won’t unseat the drivers. And in all our fallibility, even if we do not drink and drive or text and drive, we will continue to drive while distracted by a passenger or a roadside attraction; drive while tired or in a hurry in our overscheduled lives; drive while none-of-the-above but still not in full cognitive or physical control of our cars or environment. In other words, we will continue to drive while human.

Influence makers including Oprah and DOT head Ray LaHood are campaigning against distracted driving, which contributed to an estimated 5,474 deaths and 448,000 injuries in 2009. These efforts, like the enormously influential campaign against drunk driving in the eighties, are invaluable. But we also need reminding that driving under any conditions remains an inherently dangerous act.

Focus on the driver, however useful, often has left the car with the image of a neutral tool. Cars are even celebrated as the savior in many a crash story and car ad (“My Subaru saved my life!” goes one successful campaign).)

If we focused on the car itself, we might ask automakers to stop playing the hero by trumpeting their enhanced safety features while they cram their vehicles full of electronic distractions. We might ask the industry to stop running ads featuring racing when excessive speed factors into nearly a third of all fatal crashes. We might require vehicle technology that caps top speeds. And we might question the necessity of some of our car trips or of handing our teens the car keys quite so early.

Though not as exciting as visions of vehicles hovering above highways, the most effective way we now have to protect our families from crash risk is to drive less.

Catherine Lutz, an anthropologist at Brown University’s Watson Institute, and Anne Lutz Fernandez, a former marketer and banker, are the authors of Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on our Lives (Palgrave Macmillan).