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What do we mean when we say something is an “accident”? When a motorist kills a pedestrian or cyclist it is often described in the press and the criminal justice system as a “car accident” — even when there is a clear cause such as a driver who was drunk, distracted or speeding. According to a new book by journalist Jessie Singer, events that most people describe as accidents are anything but. Singer argues that who lives and dies by accident in America is not random but utterly predictable. Using the word, she says, protects the powerful and leads to “the prevention of prevention.”

You can find the full transcript of this episode here.

***This episode is sponsored by Cleverhood rain gear.***

SHOW NOTES:

Purchase There Are No Accidents at Bookshop.org

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[This episode was originally released on October 16, 2019. We are re-releasing it in anticipation of the premiere on Showtime of the original dramatic series based on Mike Isaac’s book. More new episodes are on the way!]

For a few years after Uber launched in 2009, it seemed like the on-demand ride-hailing service might be an advance in the war on cars — a way for more people to share fewer vehicles and to reduce overall automobile dependence. Fast forward a decade, and the rise of Uber (along with Lyft) has instead resulted in increased congestion, reductions in transit ridership, and the exploitation of a precarious workforce that the company would love to make obsolete altogether. In this episode, we talk with New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac about his new book, “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” in which he chronicles the rise and fall of Uber’s co-founder, Travis Kalanick. We hear what Mike has to say about the cult of the founder and the way Kalanick’s winner-take-all mentality has negatively affected the streets of the world’s cities.

You can find the full transcript of this episode here.

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Remember when Uber, the taxi-hailing app on your mobile phone, was going to revolutionize transportation, transform cities, and lead us to our glorious robot-car future? That wasn’t so long ago. So, what happened? Where did it all go? Cory Doctorow has some ideas. A prolific non-fiction author, sci-fi novelist, and technology activist Doctorow has been a keen observer and critic of Uber for years now. “Uber,” Doctorow writes, “is a bezzle. Every bezzle ends. And Uber’s time is up.” Plus: Reality has a well known anti-car bias.   

You can find the full transcript of this episode here.

***This episode is sponsored by Cleverhood.***

Support The War on Cars on Patreon for access to ad-free bonus content.

SHOW NOTES:

End of the Line for Uber by Cory Doctorow

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***This is a preview of a short bonus episode just for Patreon supporters. Become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars for ad-free access to this and all our exclusive content. Plus, we’ll send you stickers!***

The New Republic’s Alex Pareene joined us for Episode 78, “311 is a Joke,” and we had a lot of fun. We chatted about the battle for scarce street space in the big city and the role that municipal government plays (and doesn’t play) in sorting it all out (or not). As often happens when we get going in the studio, our conversation with Alex ran long and some good stuff didn’t make it into the final cut. In this bonus episode, we learn about Alex’s step-dad Chuck from North Dakota and hear from New York City’s now-former Mayor Bill de Blasio as he attempts to destroy a bunch of dirt bikes on Staten Island.

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Alex Pareene, a contributing editor to The New Republic and the author of The AP (Alex Pareene) Newsletter, joins the podcast to talk about his recent run of stories on cars, parking and the competition for scarce space on city streets. We discuss 311 — the non-emergency phone number for accessing municipal services — and what it tells us about how government works (or doesn’t work). What message are police sending when they fail to enforce illegal parking? As far as driving is concerned, does anything go? And how does Elon Musk’s insistence on beta-testing Full Self-Driving on public streets relate to it all?

You can find the full transcript of this episode here.

***This episode is sponsored by our friends at Cleverhood.***

Support The War on Cars on Patreon for access to ad-free bonus content.

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***This is a preview of a bonus episode. Become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars for ad-free access to this and all our exclusive content.***

Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of a person walking around in a large, wearable wooden frame meant to illustrate the space taken up by one person in a private automobile. That’s the gehzeug — or walkmobile — and it was invented by the Austrian civil engineer and professor Herman Knoflacher.

Professor Knoflacher, 81, is the head of the Institute of Transportation at the Vienna University of Technology. Long before the current global pandemic, he compared cars to a virus. It’s a provocative analogy, but Knoflacher makes a compelling case. And rather than searching for vaccines and other ways to fight this particular threat, humanity has actively helped the spread of cars, much to the detriment of the built environment, children’s health and safety and even our future on this planet.

TheWarOnCars.org

In 2019, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett and their two children moved from Vancouver to the small city of Delft in the Netherlands. The experience of transitioning to and living in a place that puts people first over automobiles forms the basis for Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives. The book, the Bruntlett’s second on the lessons offered by Dutch cities, explains the many benefits of car-free and car-lite spaces, from lower anxiety and stress, better social trust, improved health and increased independence for people of all ages and abilities. Plus, as you’ll hear, cities with fewer cars are quiet!

You can find the full transcript of this episode here.

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New York public high school students rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall in October for better bike infrastructure.

Young people want to live. It seems kind of basic, right? Anyone over the age of 35 or so probably grew up thinking that the desire to live was something to take for granted, at least on a societal scale. But many members of Gen Z worry that the places they live today will soon be uninhabitable. That they won’t be able to realize their dreams or raise their children the way previous generations did. That their very survival is at stake. And they don’t see meaningful action from the adults in charge. In this episode, we hear from some teens in Brooklyn who are demanding radical improvements in bike infrastructure to make emission-free transportation safe and accessible to all. We also talk with Dr. Elizabeth Marks, a clinical psychologist who has co-authored a new study about climate anxiety in ten thousand young people all over the world. Sixty percent said that they are either “very worried” or “extremely worried” about climate change. There’s a crisis in intergenerational trust. How can we begin to repair the damage?

***This episode is sponsored by Rad Power Bikes and Cleverhood.***

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On Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021, The War on Cars recorded a live show at Caveat on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Our special guest for the evening was Choire Sicha, an editor at large at New York Magazine, who joined us to talk about YIMBYism, “bike fascism” and life in the suburbs. Plus, why does Eric Adams, the newly elected mayor of New York City, need to fix his bike’s front fork?

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Jason Slaughter is the creator of Not Just Bikes, the wildly popular YouTube channel that covers urban design and daily living in the Netherlands. Jason’s videos are informative and entertaining, and whether they’re about the shaky finances on which the suburbs are built or something as simple as grocery shopping, each one helps viewers understand larger concepts about building cities for people, not cars. Doug sat down with Jason in Amsterdam to talk about the origins of Not Just Bikes and why places that force everyone to drive whether they want to or not just plain suck.

You can find the full transcript of this episode here.

***The episode is sponsored by Rad Power Bikes.***

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