High cost of car addiction

AFTER watching the RTÉ Prime Time television programme on the scourge of tyre dumping in Ireland (May 17), it brought home yet another dimension of the consequences of our car addiction.

Like all addictions, car addiction has short-term benefits or “highs” but enormous long-term social costs.

The list of consequences is extensive – from the horrible spectre of road carnage, to critical climate change problems, to wars over oil, to environmentally damaging oil spills, to mindless traffic congestion, local air quality and health issues, to blighting our countryside by dumping used tyres and clapped-out bangers – not to mention the enormous physical cost of accommodating them on roads, as well as providing ever more space for them in towns and cities.

It is estimated the average person devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to a car. This includes driving it and while it stands idling in traffic congestion, to parking it, earning money to pay for it, paying for petrol or diesel, tolls, insurance, taxes, and parking tickets. Part of this addiction problem is also the failure to provide a quality and reliable public transport system that would act as a viable alternative. But this argument falls short when you consider most car trips made are less than six kilometres and therefore can be walked or cycled, with greater personal health and environmental benefits.

Kicking the “car habit” is not going to be easy because, like all dependencies, there are going to be a lot of excuses to stay in the car “comfort zone”.

But with a few determined changes to the way we transport ourselves, adjusting our expectations, demands and values, our beautiful countryside need not be dominated by the ugliness of car domination and the consequential problems of tyre mountains, dumps and car wrecks.

John Fitzgerald

Fahee

Kilmacow

Co Kilkenny