Catherine Lutz

As though to prove compromise isn’t as stiff a corpse as it appears, the Obama administration announced on Friday that it had reached a key agreement with an industry proficient at stonewalling government regulation: the automakers. The deal, which meaningfully raises fuel economy standards, was something of a welcome surprise, with the industry putting aside its usual act as regulatory victim and playing the role of committed partner.

Gerontologists in a laboratory at the University of Southern California exposed a group of mice to the same atmospheric conditions that humans encounter when driving along the freeway. Horrifyingly, they discovered that the mice’s brains showed the kind of swelling and inflammation associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The researchers didn’t super-dose to get these results: the mice were exposed to freeway air for the equivalent of 15 hours a week-- less than the 18.5 hour average Americans spend in their cars. Jokes aside about getting those darn mice off the road, the study suggests that driving less can reduce our risk of brain damage.

The media loves drama, of course. As your high school English teacher explained it, if Hamlet doesn’t get pissed about his dad’s murder or if Atticus Finch doesn’t step up to defend a black man falsely accused -- that is, if somebody doesn’t say no, you’ve got no story. So the vociferous opposition of a handful of people to a handful of bike lane projects in New York City has been dramatized, through a series of news stories and op-eds, into a full-blown citizens’ backlash against the complete streets movement.

Our local paper recently ran the story of Edith Cameron, killed in a car crash on a road we sometimes use. We anxiously scanned the column looking for that something that one of the drivers involved must have done wrong—the thing that we surely would never do, like hit the road without a seatbelt or after downing a few beers.

Travelling the country this past year promoting our book Carjacked, we met some pretty remarkable people who are working to reduce the price Americans pay for mobility. In the book we detail how our car dependent transportation system offers an awesome array of downsides, though they are often obscured by the auto industry’s relentless marketing blizzard.

The cheerful come-ons seem more cheesy than sleazy -- “Looking for a New Way to Borrow?” “Apply Now-Get Cash Today!” “Go From $0 to Cash in Less Than an Hour” -- but these are not the friendly offers of local diversified banks. They are the insidious pitches of companies that do one thing very well: make car title loans to Americans desperate for cash.