Car Culture: Time For a Change? (Part Four)

Possibly the most significant impact the car has had on the human environment is its contribution to the erosion of communities. There was some radio poll earlier this week, when people were asked to vote for their choice of the greatest contemporary social problem - or some such. I won't bore you with my Top Ten; but my number one is definitely the break down of community. Of course, a topic like this is itself somewhat question-begging. What do you mean by 'community'? Are you in danger of sentimentalising the value of community per se or the qualities of specific communities in the past? Would you really want to live in a close-knit community where everyone knows each other's business - having grown used to the privacy and self-reliance of modern living?

There undoubtedly is an element of viewing things through rose-tinted spectacles when we talk nostalgically about the loss of community. However, the absence of community throughout much of modern Britain, and the sense that it is something that we've lost, is undeniable. But how much of this is really attributable to the car? The decline in communities is usually ascribed to more general socio-cultural trends such as greater social 'mobility'; technology reducing our dependence on other people; increased materialism and individualism; women's access to work and careers diminishing the time and energy they have to devote to community building, which was largely driven by women in the past; the collapse of traditional social structures that gave people a sense of their place within a community, such as marriage, class and the church; and the increased levels of crime and delinquency, making people feel unsafe and forcing them to retreat into their own homes.

All of these are of course contributory factors, although some of them are arguably more by-products of community break down rather than causes. The car is another such contributory factor: it is, to coin a metaphor, an accelerator of all of the above trends. It's possible to think of ways in which the rise of universal car ownership has facilitated each of these social changes. For 'social mobility' substitute mobility in general: the way in which - in part thanks to the car - people are no longer tied to a particular locality (viz community) to be the centre of their personal or work life. Similarly, because of automotive technology, we are no longer dependent on public (local community-provided) transport, or on assistance in moving ourselves and our possessions provided by neighbours or local acquaintances. Women's access to careers, too, has been greatly advanced by their access to cars, meaning they have far more choice about the jobs they do; their work becomes personal and aspirational, rather than being involved in the provision of basic services to a local community, which was often the only work available to women.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I used to think it was ridiculous and - when I learnt the meaning of the term - decadent for households to own more than one car. This was based on the model that father either used the car for work, in which case mother didn't need a car (because she either didn't have a job at all or, if she did, this was more locally based); or else, father used public transport to get to work and mother than had the use of the car (which was my childhood situation). Nowadays, of course, it's common to see houses with at least two, sometimes as many as four or five, cars in the front drive and in what used to be called the front garden: at least one for each of the master and mistress of the household, along with cars for each of the grown-up children as they stay on in the parental home increasingly longer. And indeed, it would be hard for the families involved to envisage how they could manage without their cars if they all have 'no alternative' other than to travel out to work and to use the car for social life - neither of which are centred around their local area. For myself, I grumble about having to provide an unpaid taxi service to my non-driving partner. But I wonder what the effect on our relationship would be if she did pass a driving test and acquire a car. Would we miss the time we spend together in the car and the opportunity it provides to talk about things? Would our lives diverge even more if, instead of using only one car to go about our chores and our pleasures (the more sociable and greener option), we started using two? Individual cars lead to separate lives and careers, which in turn so often lead to separation.

I'm not trying to imply that women shouldn't enjoy the independence and freedoms which the car has played its part in bringing about. The car has undoubtedly brought tremendous social benefits - but, as I've said before, there has also been a social cost. One of the biggest of these, related to the whole community question, is the restriction of our children's freedom to roam and play outdoors. The two main reasons why parents are so afraid to let their children go out on their own nowadays are both directly car-related: 1) they could get run over; 2) they could be abducted (most easily by someone driving a car or van who can whisk them away in a flash).

The first of these concerns relates to the fact that we have still not adapted to the lethal potential of the car, in ways that I've discussed in previous instalments of this blog series. This is ultimately a case of our tolerating a certain quotient of child fatalities because of our personal and economic dependence on the car. But if we really wanted to put a stop to these accidents and reduce at least this aspect of our fear for our children, then only radical measures would do, such as banning cars and commercial vehicles altogether from driving through residential areas in hours when children are about, and imposing strict speed restrictions backed up by draconian penalties for violations - and even more so for any accidents involving children that still occurred. Is this a social cost we'd be prepared to pay to protect our children and let them play outdoors; or is endangering children's lives the cost we're willing to pay for the convenience of driving around wherever and whenever we want? And it's not just a case of reducing the number of road deaths but of a massive quality-of-life improvement that could result: for our kids who could suddenly reclaim the great outdoors; for parents who would no longer need to live in fear; and for all the 'community' who could enjoy the reduction in noise and pollution, and even start to enjoy walking around their own streets and getting to know their neighbours.

But what of the other concern of parents: that their kids could be abducted or 'befriended' by a paedophile who would then abuse them? Wouldn't children be more vulnerable not less to the unwelcome attention of local paedophiles if they were all out playing in the streets? Yes, if you're just looking at this with today's context in mind: the lack of a community that is watching out for the kids and is even out and about in the streets in question; cars that can just come along at any time when kids might be about; people, including those on the sex offenders list, living as strangers from one another and not known to the parents and others in the community who are concerned for the children's safety. If neighbourhoods are transformed into communities where people know each other and take on shared responsibility for keeping an eye on the children, and can be trusted because they're known to each other; and if, above all, the car is kept out (vital for communities to feel safe in their environment, to enjoy it, and look after it and each other) - then maybe parents would feel more confident that their children would be safe outdoors. Because they'd feel they owned and were in control of the world beyond the front door. Because this was a human world, a community, as it was when they were children and were safe to roam.

More on the car and the community in the next instalment of this blog series.