25 January

They’re doing stunning graphics for stats these days, check this out. I was in a serious car accident about 15 years ago and don’t know how I survived, luck more than anything. You always assume these things happen to other people, until they happen to you. I think cars are one of the best and worst things humankind has ever invented. They give you amazing freedom of movement, but they destroy the places we live in with roads and noise and pollution, and turn our suburbs into disconnected ghettos. We wonder why people feel disconnected in their lives, but cars enable this - no need for real community infrastructure where you live if you can just drive somewhere else to get it. And once everybody gets one, you get gridlock and the freedom of movement goes. And they kill. Thousands of us. Not because we can’t drive but because if you put everybody out on a road at speed with an extremely powerful machine, the law of averages will mean thousands of those people will likely die. I’m a fan of ‘self-driving’ cars not so much because it will mean better cars, but because it will mean options to reduce our need for cars full stop.