Hideouswhitenoise, Issue #30
by Mr Forehed
The cigarette smoker. Once a sexy symbol from the silver screen, now a shaky frail addict, forced to do their foul deed behind the woodshed, or on the wind swept sidewalk of a downtown building. They have become the pariah of society. They not only content to kill themselves with their filthy habit, they also kill those around them through second hand smoke. What was once thought of as something as the height of fashion is now on the same footing as a heroin addict, or a child abuser.
There is another killer cruising the street that makes the cigarette smoker look like a kindergarten bully. They have their own habit and it kills far more effectively then having a butt. You know their kind, their form hunched, one hand draped over the steering wheel, while the other lightly caresses a stick shift. A pose copied so many times in commercials and movies. They race around the country thinking its their dog given right to drive like an arsehole and run down anyone who gets in their way.
To say the automobile is equal in its damage as that of the cigarette, would be a horrible injustice to all who have been crushed, punctured and mutilated by the number one killer of people under 21 in North America. The automobile and the multi-billion dollar industry that surrounds it kills and destroys far more then the lowly cigarette could ever hope to hope to achieve.
While cigarette smoking is now socially unacceptable to all those except the manufacturers, the automobile is placed higher and higher on an ever growing pile of bodies, a monument to a society that has lost sight of what is right and wrong. Putting economic growth ahead of human life.
As a society, we place more emphasis on economic damage then we do on human life. Witness when a natural disaster happens, or a fire consumes a city block the news always gives the damage in dollars before they give the damage in human life. And the same is how them compute the cost of smoking to society.
We have all heard, at nauseam, how much smoking cigarettes cost the economy, costs in work hours, costs the medical system. Well, how much does the automobile cost? How much the government on all levels subsidize the use of the car?
Letıs start with the government shall we. The Ontario Government, the same bunch who want us all to tighten our belts in these hard economic times has no problem subsidizing the automobile industry to the tune of Billions of dollars a year. This includes $2 Billion dollars for maintenance and construction, 1.173 Billion yearly interested paid out for car applicable debt as well as a couple of hundred million more for policing the highways. No other toy would have that many batteries included.
Once you factor in the 800 000 hours of police hours, the 74 000 hours of emergency visits, the 38 000 ambulance calls and the 9 000 calls performed by the fire department the total cost of traffic collisions in Ontario reach a staggering 9 Billion dollars a year.
So what, the car driver is in the majority, they want to drive their car and everyone enjoys the economic benefits the automobile brings to our society. If you excuse the pun, it puts the drive in our economy. The benefits of the auto industry in Ontario far out weigh the few billions we shell out to keep it going. A conservative estimate would put 50% of the jobs in Ontario dependent on the oily teat of the auto industry. Its worth having our children grow up in an increasingly paved world to continue to reap those benefits. Not really, the Ontario government collects about a billion dollars less then what the auto industry pumps into the provincial economy and only 550 million is in taxes.
So, at least in Ontario, ours to recover, the economic benefits isnıt exactly that great. We pay over $8.5 Billion extra to have people run down on the city streets and crushed on the highway. This does not include the personal cost of running a vehicle in Ontario. Try $6000.00 a year for the average motorist who is lucky enough to have a job to afford a car.
The automobile is not exactly the healthiest thing for the economy of the province and it isnıt the healthiest thing for itıs citizens. You canıt put a price tag on the cost of stress and decline of quality of life due to the automobile, but you can put a price on health related illnesses due to automobile exhaust. In Ontario it is estimated to be $645 million.
The average transportation emission of carbon dioxide in Urban Canada per year per person is 70 000 000 tonnes. Total transportation related carbon dioxide in the GTA in 1990 was 13 442 kilotonnes just think what it is in 1997. What this means is a startling increase in asthma and other lung related diseases. Gee, maybe all the cancer related deaths shouldnıt be put at the front door of DuMaurier and Players.
More people have been killed in the United States by the automobile then in all the United States has been involved in. A quarter of a million people in the world die because of car accidents. Over a thousand people die in car related accidents in Ontario alone. The chances that a child will be a traffic fatality is 1 in 6.
This is just the regular stuff, we still havenıt figured in the environmental damage and other hidden costs of the car culture. Damage due to acid rain, because yah know 20% of acid rain is car related, in Ontario is $13 million. Loss of farmland comes in at just over a billion. This doesnıt include the oil spill generated every week-end by mechanics around the continent who change their oil and dump the old stuff down the drain, or into the ground. Enough to fill the Exxon Valdez. And speaking of the Valdez, you can lump in the environmental damage every time one of those huge tankers splinter on the rocks.
And let us not forget the price of ripping the material out of the ground to make the damn things, the 42% of urban land used up for parking and roads, the wildlife slaughtered on the roads every day as well as being displaced by construction as well as the eyesores known as suburbia and malls. AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaargh I canıt take it anymore. Thatıs it, the higher the tower, the higher the calibre.
So, you tell me whatıs worse?
But who is going to save us from this horrible creature industry has created. Certainly not the politicians. When Toronto City Council, at least those who were in favour of a ban against the evil tobacco were asked if they would support an automobile ban the response they gave came as no surprise. The majority replied with a resounding silence. they obviously thought the subject to ridiculous too contemplate.
The three that did reply, Dan Leckie, Barbara Hall and Peter Taubin responded in a way expected of those who want to hang onto their jobs in the next election. Dan Leckie said he was supporting certain areas that would be blocked off from automobile traffic and that he couldnıt support a ban because the political will was not present.
The Mayor, or whoever replies to her mail responded that she understood the parallel between exhaust from automobiles and cigarette smoke and though she would not support a ban at this time she was involved with many projects that would cut down the reliance of blah blah blah and so forth.
It all came from the same skipping record. We care about the publicıs health, we know that car exhaust is harmful. None of them mentioned anything about the out of control traffic in Toronto, about the 20 000 injured, the over seventy people who were killed by automobiles in Metro last year, .
The courts and police go along with the same idea. The automobile is the king of the road. They can drive anyway they want, kill as many people as they can and those who are in power, those who are elected to look after us do dick. No, they would rather do something better like ban tobacco smoking in restaurants and get re-elected.
Perhaps Dan Leckie, councilor for Ward 5 said it best when he said there was no political will because people have been brainwashed by and that is in our leaders. No one wants to do anything about the car thang because everyone is neck deep in it and loving every minute of it.
From our birth we are inundated with millions of images and half of those are probably of how sexy the automobile is. You can do anything, you can be comforted by them, you can get laid with them, they will save your life.
You see it in every car commercial, in most movies, whole television shows are built around fast cars speeding around, chasing other fast cars, doing amazing stunts. We donıt have to go into here what a great influence these images are in our popular culture. People mimic these things and because of it people die.
If movies flagrantly showed people having as much fun with cigarettes as they do with a car, the government and all those self righteous carbon burning fresh air preener would have invaded Hollywood long ago and demanded it be changed. Oh wait a second, that did happen.
Slap the same advertising ban on automobiles as you do on cigarettes ads, perhaps people would come to the realization that the automobile is slowly choking us to death. If your going to have a specific speed limit, why make a car that goes faster then that? You would certainly have less high speed pursuits by police officers.
None of this will happen because our society is locked in a dance with apocalypse. Every day the world gets into their cars, and those who donıt have a car dream about getting in a car and driving around, looking important and trying to impress people. We have been brainwashed by the automobile companies and their billions of dollars in advertising dollars that the carbon burner is an indispensable part of our world.
Well you canıt ban cars, just think of all the jobs you would lose, just think of the economic ruin. Well then there you have it. That is why Tobacco is being chased into the ground and the auto industry is being left alone. General Motors is the biggest employer in the world. The Auto Workers have one of the most powerful unions in the world. Advertising agencyıs spend billions of dollars a year on tv, magazine and billboard spots. What politician would mess with that kind of mixture.
And if youıre still not convinced that cigarette smoking is as bad for you as car exhaust, why donıt you spend an hour in a garage with a few chain smokers and then an hour in a garage with one running car. See what happens.
The
Autosaurus from adbusters
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