There are three major problems caused by an auto-based society: financial, ecological, and societal costs.


As with most problems, the financial detriment caused to people by owning and operating automobiles is multi-tiered. Some levels are quite obvious, others are less obvious, and the rest are all but invisible.

Purchasing and using automobiles directly creates the following expenses:

A. Initial cost:
Consists of a down payment, usually followed by monthly payments or a lease amount (which sometimes includes a balloon payment and/or fees). In fairness, the car will have resale value, but depreciation escalates dramatically once the car is driven off the lot.

B. Gasoline:
Often one tank per week or more.

C. Oil changes:
Generally one change every 3-5 months.

D. Insurance:
Usually paid monthly. Amounts can vary greatly depending on many factors, including information about the car (safety of make and model, age of the vehicle) and information about the driver (sex, age, marital status, accident records).

E. Maintenance:
Includes tires, car washes, engine fluids, batteries, jumper cables, seat covers, etc.

F. Fines:
Can be avoided, but most people get a parking or traffic ticket occasionally.

G. Accidents:
Insurance deductibles are frequently kept high to reduce monthly payments, but that increases out-of-pocket costs after an accident occurs.

H. Taxes:
Depends on type and age of car, and on driver’s zip code.

All of these costs are paid by the owner of the car, but there are many more costs to the owner, which don’t necessarily factor into the purchase and operational costs of driving. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

I. Foreign military involvement to keep the cost of oil down:
Desert Storm was a war fought for many reasons, the most significant of which was to ensure that the cost of crude oil did not go up. While this goal was achieved (oil prices at the end of Desert Storm were returned to nearly pre-war levels), it didn’t mean that automobile owners didn’t pay more per gallon. We may have paid less at the pump, but we also paid for the war effort to keep prices down. If the money spent on military involvement to keep oil prices down is added into the equation, the per-gallon price of fuel jumps up to nearly $7.

J. Clean up efforts for our air, water, and land:
The U.S. spends millions of dollars each year cleaning up the natural resources that have been tarnished by automobiles. These are tax dollars at work, paid for by automobile drivers, and non-drivers alike. These clean up efforts are necessary, and NO ONE wants to stop them, but we could significantly reduce their need if we drove less, and purchased more environmentally-friendly vehicles.

K. Health issues caused by automobile pollution:
Each year, thousands of citizens are hospitalized for ailments caused or aggravated by increased air pollution. Some of these citizens have insurance to cover their medical costs, but still more require assistance from the government, which is paid for with our tax dollars.

L. Subsidies and bailout costs paid to car makers and oil companies:
Huge amounts of tax dollars are spent each year in the form of waived taxes, subsidies to keep companies in certain locations, and bailout costs for the companies that lobby best.
M. Police, paramedics, city services:
40% of most cities’ police calls are traffic related, as are 15% of all department runs. Cars account for 16% of paramedics’ services. Fire departments are also burdened with the excessive amounts of deadly and serious injury accidents and with car fires (which in some cities account for as much as 15% of all fires). All of this is paid for with tax dollars.

N. Roads and Highways:
Perhaps the most costs related to automobile use stem from roads and highways. It is impossible to calculate just how much money is spent on roads each year because so many of the funds culled to subsidize roadways are hidden in property, general, and sales taxes, but nationally, they are in excess of $550 billion a year.

The equation to calculate the real cost of owning a car has gotten very large. Only by adding up A + (B + I) + C + D + E + F + G + H + J + K + L + M + N is the actual cost of automobile ownership reached. Leasing is even worse because all costs stay the same, but when you’ve finished adding it all up, you don’t get to subtract the resale value of the vehicle.

When considering the ecological damage caused by automobiles, there are three major factors: 1. air/water pollution, 2. waste, and 3. land consumption and usage.

Air and water pollution caused by cars, trucks, SUVs, buses, tractors, construction vehicles, and the like are very well documented. In fact, according to the EPA, “automobiles create more polluted air than any other source,” and “although technology has significantly reduced auto emissions, dramatic increases in the number of vehicle miles traveled has overwhelmed the advances.”

Ozone:
The ozone layer, miles above the earth’s surface, protects us from solar ultraviolet radiation. However, ground level ozone damages our lung tissue. This harmful ozone comes from a complex chemical reaction involving hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and sunlight. You’ve probably heard of Ozone Action Days. These are generally calm summer days when the weather makes it easier to create harmful ground level ozone by driving our cars. Harmful ozone emissions are created in three stages of auto driving: 1. during the first two minutes after starting the engine, 2. while the engine is driving or idling, and 3. in the minutes following turning off the engine. 70% of the ozone produced while driving occurs during the first and last of these stages. So whether you’re driving 100 feet, or 100 miles, 70% of the emissions created are the same.

Acid Rain:
The number one cause of acid rain is the burning of fossil fuels, and while the main culprit is industry, automobiles also contribute to this by burning not only gasoline, but oil. Acid rain has many far-reaching effects, including visibility, pulmonary health, corrosion of paints, metals, and woods, and pollution of surface waters and forests. In other words, acid rain affects everything! Here’s how it works, according to the EPA: “Acid rain occurs when emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and oxidants to form various acidic compounds. This mixture forms a mild solution of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. Sunlight increases the rate of most of these reactions.” Thus, acid rain falls from the sky, killing plants, polluting our drinking water, and eating away at whatever it can.

Waste:
Automobiles create waste in many ways. The materials wasted by cars increase as the size of the car increases. While small Geo Metro-style vehicles do pollute and create waste, the amounts created by such small cars are far less than those created by Ford Expedition-style SUVs. The types of waste from the two cars is the same: tires, oil, batteries, anti-freeze, filters, fan belts, sparkplugs, etc. The difference is that the Expedition uses larger, and more, of these things. The tires on a Metro consist of FAR less rubber than those on the Ford. The Metro requires less oil, less anti-freeze, smaller belts, and less or smaller quantities of virtually everything associated with it, because it’s smaller. Yet problems remain, even with the Metro. Personal transport vehicles all pollute more per capita than public transport methods do, regardless of whether it’s a Dodge Neon that gets 54 miles to the gallon, or a Lincoln Navigator than gets 12.

Land Usage:
Cars cause urban sprawl. In cities where everyone owns and uses cars all the time, the city naturally tries to accommodate them. As cars get bigger and greater in numbers, cities must expand, enlarging roads, highways, intersections, overpasses, parking lots, driveways, and all other places cars go to satisfy the demands of larger and more numerous vehicles. All this expansion happens at the expense of farm lands, lawns, public parks, sidewalks, historical landmarks, and all the other uses land has when it is not paved over. This diminishes available land needed for plants and animals. Plants create oxygen for us to breath, feed us, and provide beauty while creating homes and breeding space for other species. Haphazardly paving over nature endangers not only humans, but also all other living things.

Of all the problems facing the world today, automobiles foster several of the worst. Some of these problems negatively affect lower-income families, while others concern issues of our national security. The bottom line is that, in the long run, an auto-culture affects us all in often adverse ways.

The Segregation of Society and Urban Sprawl:
Cars, perhaps inadvertently, have been used to segregate society into the haves and the have-nots. Wealthier people can afford nicer cars and are therefore willing and able to commute 30+ miles to work and be relatively unconcerned about breakdowns. Lower-income people, on the other hand, can’t afford to buy these safer, more reliable, more comfortable cars, so they are less likely to move 30 miles outside of town. (Notice that I am politely leaving out any mention of racism, and not even bringing “white flight” into the equation.) This means that suburbs are made up of wealthier people, in part because these people own newer, more expensive cars, while the inner cities are made up of lower-income people, in part because they own older, less-reliable vehicles.

In this way, cars contribute to urban sprawl. Sprawl occurs when large groups of people move away from something. In this case, the large groups of people are upper-income citizens, and the something they’re moving away from is the center of the city. With all the upper-income taxpayers gone, inner cities get less money for schools, roads, police, public area upkeep, and other maintenance, while the suburbs get more money for these services. In this automobile-centric setup, wealthier people have a better quality of life and lower-income people have little chance of improving theirs. It may seem that this system only affects lower-income people, but in fact, all citizens are negatively affected by segregation. In case study after case study, it has been shown that children who grow up surrounded by only “their kind” (be it race, socioeconomic level, or gender) grow up to be more close-minded and less open to new ideas.

Dependence on Foreign Oil and the Link to Terrorism:
There’s been a lot of controversy lately surrounding the issue of SUVs and their link to terrorism. You may have heard someone make that connection before, or even seen one of the anti-SUV ads recently released by The Detroit Project, and found the idea to be utterly absurd. “I don’t support the terrorists!” you say. “I just mind my own business and drive my Explorer to work everyday!”

Well guess what? If you drive (and particularly if you drive a gas-guzzling SUV), you probably do support terrorism. This is, of course, a disturbing notion. No one wants to think that they’re helping fund the Taliban by driving their Expedition to the mall. But here’s the reality:

Cars (and particularly SUVs) need gas, which is made from oil, which is largely imported from foreign countries. The U.S. imports half of its oil, and a large portion of that imported oil comes from Middle Eastern countries that are notorious for funding and harboring terrorist groups. Saudi Arabia, for example, is one of the major oil-producing countries of the world, from which the U.S. gets 12% of its oil. Saudi Arabia has also funded many terrorist groups in the past, including the Taliban.

With the popularization of SUVs in the last two decades, the demand for oil in the U.S. has grown significantly. The more gas our vehicles need, the more dependent we become on foreign countries for oil. The problem with this situation is twofold: 1) As I mentioned above, the more money we pour into Middle Eastern countries in exchange for oil, the more money goes to terrorist groups, and 2) if for any reason one or more Middle Eastern country slashed oil shipments to the U.S. (and with all the bombings that have going on recently, it’s not terribly hard to imagine that happening), we would be, to put it lightly, up a creek. Living in an automobile-dependent society as we do, we would be literally immobilized without oil shipments from the Middle East.

To be realistic, the U.S. only holds about 3% of the world’s oil reserves (much of which is untapped, and usually with good reason – for instance, some of that oil lies beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), so it is unlikely that we will ever completely cease to be reliant on foreign oil. We can, however, reduce our dependency on terrorist-harboring nations by purchasing more fuel-efficient vehicles and driving less.

As you can see, the financial, ecological, and societal costs of cars are much greater than most of us assume. However, these problems can have solutions if we so choose. Go to the Solutions section to find out what you can do to help things get better... not worse.