Orphan Road

The recent problem with the Critical Mass ride points to some deeper problems with our "love affair" with the car. First and foremost would be the bias shown by the police and mainstream journalism. Initial reports described a driver terrified by an unprovoked attack that broke his windows, causing him to flee and "accidentally" hit some cyclists.

Those of us who have read the interviews, including those with the driver, now know this story was completely false- but there's been no prominent retraction. The police quite obviously are trying to "take down" Critical Mass and using a credulous press as one tool to do so.

This is a big mistake. At the core of Critical Mass is an anarchist (and by "anarchist" I mean "intensely self-disciplined") spirit that revels in revolution. They will love a challenge, and it's hard to scare people who are accustomed to riding bikes in American traffic.

The Cascade Bicycle Club has weighed in with disapprobation for Critical Mass- according to Cascade, drivers should be gently encouraged to tolerate cyclists. One big problem with this theory- the driver of the car was formerly a bicycle commuter.

Any such discussion will include the guy who hates cyclists because they "run red lights- the laws are for everyone" and blah blah blah. But if the talk turned to cameras to ticket drivers who run red lights, the guy is against it, and, wouldn't you know, has studies to prove that strict enforcement causes more accidents.

What we're left to deal with is an institutional bias in favor of cars, and the fact that, behind the wheel, we do things we wouldn't otherwise do, and sometimes profoundly regret. None of this, of course, would matter if the oilfields of Texas were infinite, and the laws of physics suspended so that global warming would not occur.

But in the real world, our "love affair" has turned into an ugly situation in which our mistress, the car, seems likely to ruin our marriage to civilization. Some years ago, possibly before you were born, Jean-Luc Godard took one look at this problem with a film called Weekend. It's not as though we weren't warned.

But whatever you do, don't use premium:

As the price of fuel continues to climb, more drivers are trying to save 20 or so cents a gallon by using regular or midgrade gasoline, even when their owner’s manuals recommend premium.

For gas station managers, fuel suppliers and motorists across the country, the run on the cheaper fuel has led to more uncertainty at the pumps, as some stations have run out of the cheaper grades.

I can't imagine this is good for the cars in the long run. Regardless, here in Washington, consumption of premium has dropped only slightly compared to the drop in regular.

David Kurtz finds a neat TIME magazine article from 1947 that notes, "in half a century of blissful self-delusion [mankind] has failed to perceive that the family automobile is the most monstrous engine of all."

Things haven't changed much.

This article has some interesting points to make about fuel consumption:

Americans spend 3.7 percent of their disposable income on transportation fuels. At its lowest point, that share was 1.9 percent in 1998, and at its highest, it reached 4.5 percent in 1981, said Johnson of Global Insight.

Still, despite the rise in energy prices, gasoline remains cheaper in the United States than in most industrialized countries. In France, for example, a gallon of gasoline costs about $7.70 at today's exchange rates. Also, Americans pay less to drive a mile today than they did in 1980, once the impact of inflation and gains in fuel efficiency are taken into account, said Lee Schipper, a visiting scholar at the transportation center of the University of California, Berkeley.

Schipper estimates that the cost of gasoline per mile traveled will be about 15 cents this year. That is nearly three times the low of 5.6 cents a mile reached in 1998, when fuel efficiency peaked and prices were at their lowest. But it is still cheaper than the record paid in 1980 of 17.1 cents a mile, adjusted for inflation.

As bad as gas prices seem, they're still not as high as they've been by historical standards. But people's perception in this case matters at least as much as reality, and the perception is that gas prices are pretty darn high. Finally, it's hard to separate the increase in gas prices from the general slow down of the economy in general.

All that said, it certainly does seem like the fundamentals of supply and demand, not reckless speculation, are leading us inexorably towards $200/barrel.

Michael O'Hare has an interesting article about us and the cars, and one of his tags is "drug policy". The difference between how we treat the drug "addict" and the automobile is indeed instructive.

The "drug user" (and we are all assumed to be drug users until we prove otherwise) must prove their innocence. Thirty years of error-free performance on the job can be cancelled by a hair-analysis that proves you were in a room where someone was smoking marijuana sometime in the past 30 days.

However, if you proposed putting traffic-cams on a road where children were routinely killed by speeders, the public would revolt. Laws are for the other guy. This is the strength of the automobile addiction.

And don't think traffic jams will break this habit. In Psych 105 at the U of W, they spent a week or two on reinforcers, leading up to the overwhelming conclusion- the strongest reinforcer of behavior is a reward of a variable size provided on an irregular schedule. If you don't like high-toned schoolin', check out your local casino.

Believe it, there will be a meltdown of the public psyche when some event, probably not too far off, reveals the eminent demise of the car. When that happens, will you be part of the solution......or part of the problem?