Comic Text

In the United States, people often associate cars with independence, because having a car gives you the freedom to move from place to place. Now the whole idea of independence is a messy social contruct with a bunch of issues that I won’t get into right now.

The irony is, having a car as your only convenient mode of transportation makes you dependent on several companies (insurance, gas, roadside assistance, mechanic, parking, DMV), and any one of them could fail at a given time, leaving you unable to use the car that you’ve already spent so much money on.

Overall, we would have much more freedom of movement if most people didn’t need to own a car in the first place, and could easily get from one place to another without one. That’s the type of independence I want to strive for.

Cars and Independence - The latest comic from A Human-Scaled Journey.