AntiCaR

by 

Reclaim the Streets Network

Dear Motorist,
     Large pieces of metal hurling around at high speed are
danger to life & limb. How does society tolerate the annual
slaughter of 5000 people a year in Britain, & a million globally?
Why do hit and run drivers not get the publicity of serial
killers. Their victims are just as dead. Politicians will dismiss
a rise in crime as 'mostly traffic offenses', whilst becoming
apoplectic about car theft and joy riding. A single death in a
rail crash is headline news, meriting a public enquiry and
resignation of ministers, whilst the most horrific of motorway
pile-ups hardly worth a mention in the press.
     In India the cow is a sacred animal to which motorists must
give way. Nowhere is the human similarly sacred. The fact that
we can not cross the road if you are coming is taken for granted.
Imagine if you had to stop for us would you still spend 10,000
on a car.

5000 slaughtered each year in Britain each year.

     How would a society of motorists tolerate anything else?
Cars are considered a form of liberty but the only form of
liberty they bring is the liberty to kill and maim others. You
have liberty to go anywhere, as long as there is a multi-storey
at the end. You have been sold a mere representation of freedom.
     Is it the risk of driving that excites you? Cars are sold
on their ability to reach dangerous erotic speeds. But you end
up edging your way through a traffic jam at less than walking
pace. You have been sold danger without excitement.
     We weep not for you nor the time you have spent working to
pay for your car and its petrol. We weep for ourselves because
drunk or sober you are mutilating and killing us.

Transformation of city

Cars  take up so much space, parked and moving. They also
need workshops to mend them, petrol stations, insurance offices
& of course hospitals. 23% of London, 44% of Los Angeles is
devoted to the car. The more people have cars, or rather the more
money is spent by motorists, the more places become out of reach
to people who do not have cars; witness the exodus of shops from
high streets to ring roads. Ironically the machine that is sold
on its ability to bestow freedom of movement and to cover
distances actually creates as much distance as it traverses. This
moving of facilities away impoverishes your life, as you spend
longer behind the wheel. Our movements are channeled along ever
restricted paths, we have more and more roads to cross and  they
are ever more busy, smelly, unpleasant and dangerous.
     The final irony is that you can gain no satisfaction from
all the space that is being generously turned over to your use.
You do not actually appreciate the space that you pass through
even though you prevent us from using it; all you do is try to
pass through as quickly as possible. The more of it there is, the
more obstacles there are to upset you: other cars. You must hate
cars even more than we do.


Rape of the planet

1     Cars consume vast amounts of  raw materials. Mining ores
carves great open cast scars in the landscape.
2     The petrol cars need pollutes at its point of production
and consumption and every point in between: the super tanker, the
filling station and the engine. Cars use a third of world's oil.
In OECD countries 40% in 1973, 60% in 1989. Two thirds of cars
are in G7 countries.
3     Cars create so much waste. Thousands of used tyres are
dumped at sea, the rest accumulate in massive dumps. Millions of
use batteries leak in toxic waste dumps.
4     Cars are biggest cause of atmospheric pollution and global
warming. Exhaust fumes make us ill from the nitrous oxides, the
carbon monoxide and the hydrocarbons.
5     Lead in exhaust fumes brain damages children. But unleaded
petrol is higher in cancer causing agents and requires more crude
oil to be made.
6     Millions of animals are squashed each year by cars.
7     New roads carve up the countryside.

We will stop you

     Car ownership is not as universal as it pretends. In UK 35%
of households have no regular use of a car, 48% in 1970. There
is very little overlap between those who hate cars and those who
control media. We have no big lobby groups. But we are organising
and taking action. Organizations such as the Pedestrian Freedom
Front &  Society for Cutting Up Motorists have formed. The thing
that is so infuriating about cars is what make them so
vulnerable: they are everywhere.
     Many car haters are turning their hatred into playful
actions. Cyclists blocked the M42 in 1991 by cycling between the
cars when jammed up and refusing to move. In Brighton cars were
misdirected to the outskirts by protesters in shiny jerkins. Much
of this action has grown out of more people becoming aware of
links between profligate overcomsumption and environmental
degradation.

Resistance does not only take form of road blockages.
     Your car is your alienation. Is communication possible? Must we smash your
windscreen; break through to you and tell you that there is a world out here?
We want to reach out to you and gently lift you out of the car. Before we pour
petrol on the seat and set it alight. By petrol it was brought to life and so
by petrol it shall die. So don't say you have not been warned.

Footnote: People often confuse three separate environmental problems:
1) the greenhouse effect, which is caused mainly by CO2, which is emitted by
cars. CFCs also contribute.
2) ozone depletion in upper atmosphere,  which is caused by CFCs.
3) low level ozone smog, which is generated by sunlight acting on car fumes.
Reproduce this text at will. It was ripped off from a PFF pamphlet (PO Box
406, Stoke On Trent, ST1 4RN) by the Broad Leafed Collective (Don't look for
us, we will find you).
For more anti-car info contact Reclaim the Streets Network. 071 737 0100.


