Driving Is The New Smoking?
I’m not sure I bought the comparison, but it is interesting. At a minimum, I like the idea that it could get us all thinking a bit more about how to market bicycling better, since that’s such a crucial part of smoking and car-driving success. I don’t like the idea of giving the act of driving ‘addiction’ status - driving could not possibly be as addictive as the nicotine in cigarettes, nor as addictive as bicycling.
Whether it’s an apt comparison or not - smoking is on the rebound. And all that settlement money? State governments had other ideas for it.
But on the international front, I started wondering if the U.S. government had any history of pushing cars into new markets the same way they did cigarettes. Whether it was Thailand or China, governments around the world were forced to deal with American cigarettes, even though they knew the cost of doing so - the human toll, health care costs, etc. - would crush them. Was anything like this necessary to force American cars onto other countries? Googling around, I didn’t find much interesting. On the other hand, it might not have been generally recognized until recently that automobiles are, in fact, dangerous to the population. International trade treaties have clauses in them that protect countries, in theory, from being coerced into importing things that they know will be harmful to their country. It didn’t stop Big Tobacco, so I don’t know that it would be able to stop Big Auto, but you never know.
And, as I’ve assembled a post on Ralph Nader’s book, Unsafe At Any Speed, I’ve been thinking about the institutional changes we should push for - with respect to corporations, of course, but also specifically to the auto industry. For instance, the tobacco companies knew forever that smoking caused cancer, but they covered it up. The tobacco executives got in front of Congress and did their dance, lying the whole way, like the car executives just did. Maybe we should start looking for an Automobile Settlement to go with the Tobacco Settlement? And have a serious discussion about the role the auto industry plays in America.
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