If we really feared the crash, most of us would be unable to look at a car, let alone drive one.
–writer J. G. Ballard, author of the novel Crash

By Phill Courtney
For many years my father was a general practitioner attorney, doing some, yes, homicide cases (two), but also wills; probates; divorces; and personal injury lawsuits, one of which involved a woman whose sciatic nerve was hit by a needle injection from a poorly trained nurse, resulting in a leg paralysis and a substantial settlement.
Another of my dad’s cases that was memorable for me came along during a short period when I worked for my dad (a mistake—but that’s another story) and involved a young woman who’d been the victim of disabling physical injuries including severe brain damage shortly before her wedding. She’d survived the auto accident, but her fiancé, who was driving, died when he lost control of the car, while her life was forever altered.
Occasionally, she’d shuffle into the office with her partially paralyzed left side in the company of her caregiving aunt in order to consult with my dad about the conservatorship he was handling for her family. Although she could grasp some of what was happening through the fog of her damaged brain, it was also heartbreaking to see what a single moment of inattention behind the wheel had done to the life of one young woman who was looking forward to a happy life with her husband and perhaps a family.
I’ve never forgotten her. But then my experience with her and that case is hardly unique, and I can say with a fair degree of confidence that basically no one in this country has gone through life without being either injured in an auto accident themselves, or knowing someone who has, or also killed; a toll that includes members of my own family and a close friend.
One of my younger brothers had his elbow badly mangled in a rollover auto accident in high school (yes—an old story: teenagers out for a joy ride), while my other brother (who’d actually lost a friend in another high school joyride accident) suffered from some lifelong back and neck trouble after he’s been broadsided at an intersection by a woman who’d run a red light.
As for one of my best friends: he was almost killed while walking down a roadside when a man driving a van after, as they say: he’d had “a bit too much to drink,” had struck and thrown him some 150 feet, resulting in broken bones; a lengthy hospital stay; and a lifelong limp. He was lucky to be alive, and although, like my dad’s client, he’d survived, his life was never the same after he became addicted to pain killers and eventually died of a drug overdose.
Sadly, the stories are endless and all because of our car culture and our affection and even love for the auto, which has been going on now for well-over 100 years. Of course, besides the many victims of accidents that we’ve personally known, the list also includes many famous people, including writers like Albert Camus (The Stranger) and Nathanial West (Day of the Locust), as well as some actors like James Dean (Rebel Without a Cause) and Jayne Mansfield (Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)
Hollywood trivia buffs may remember that Playboy playmate Mansfield (who’d made “Hollywood history” by becoming the first mainstream movie star to go the “Full Monty” in a 1963 film) was being driven in a car that rear-ended a tractor-trailer rig late one night in 1967, killing her; her manager; and the young man driving. She was 34 years old. (Her children, sleeping in the back, lived, and, despite the urban myth, no, she was not decapitated.) Her death did have one beneficial outcome however when metal bars were mandated on the backs of trucks to help prevent such “drive-under” casualties.
Now, before I step onto my soapbox for some “Phillosophizing” about motor vehicles, I have two more personal stories of interest. During the latter part of the previous decade, a friend of my wife engaged in a one-woman battle against both the car culture and the Redlands city bureaucracy. She lives off one of our cross-town thoroughfares which was often used (and probably still is) by local speed-demons as a drag strip, usually late at night.
Several of those dragsters had lost control at a cross-street culvert, crashing into her house—one of which completely penetrated her study; destroyed her piano; and probably would have killed her grandchildren had they been sleeping there that night as they sometimes did. My wife and I went over shortly thereafter, and it looked like a tornado had hit the house.
A long battle ensued to convince officials of the danger, and finally a flashing stop sign was installed. But it wasn’t until she took proactive action; bought several huge, and almost VW Bug-sized boulders and had them placed around the front perimeter of her house, that she could sleep soundly at night.
Another friend in Redlands is fighting a battle to calm the traffic on Pioneer St. where she lives, which only has one stop sign on an almost two-mile stretch between Orange and Judson, and, like our other friend’s street, is now a delight for those drivers determined to make an uninterrupted cross-town dash. She’s spoken to the city, and although several permanent solutions are now being considered, in the meantime she’s terrified of exiting her driveway.
Tellingly—after my friend began complaining to me about the problems on Pioneer—two young men died on that stretch when they lost control while speeding late one night and hit a lamppost. I talked to a nearby neighbor shortly thereafter and he was still profoundly shaken after his one and only experience of being the first on the scene at a fatal accident.
Although most of us have been spared that experience (one night I did see a man lying on the side of a freeway near some stopped cars, but never found out if he was alive or dead), like I’ve noted, almost all of us have known at least one person injured or killed in a motor vehicle accident–a toll now heading towards four million dead Americans since the first fatality in 1899, when pedestrian, Henry Bliss, was crushed by an electric taxi in New York City. Nowadays, deaths total over 100 every 24 hours. Yes, that’s right: over 100.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone (and there must have been some) noticed those early casualties during the cusp of the 20th century’s “auto age,” and said: You know what? If we go with a transportation system consisting primarily of all these uncoordinated vehicles moving about willy-nilly, there’s bound to be hundreds of deaths. Now, of course, it’s millions, during which time stop lights did help, but some 120 years of exhorting drivers to “slow down and be careful,” has not made much of a dent—if you’ll pardon the expression.
However, there have been some noteworthy downticks to the toll, and what’s done it? For one: safer cars with first seatbelts and then airbags (which saved a friend of mine when her car was broadside at over 100-miles-an-hour by a knucklehead fleeing police), both of which were fought tooth and nail by the auto industry until legislators wised up, thanks in no small part to consumer advocate Ralph Nader. But it wasn’t easy.
For years it was hoped that educating the public might do the trick, with many public service commercials on TV (which some of us remember) urging seatbelts. The one I remember the most featured actors portraying people opposed to the belt, one of whom was a woman with a wrinkled nose and apparently some wrinkled dresses as well who said she didn’t like seatbelts because “they wrinkle my dress.”
Just before the rates of seatbelt use rose, not because of learning their benefits, but because of the laws, they’d only gotten compliance up to some 15 percent nation-wide (so much for education—and I’ve been an educator), but now only one state does not mandate their use for adults—New Hampshire—where their state motto is: “Live free or die.” Well, I guess they still are.
But now, at a time when we’re well into the second century of cars, the “Faustian bargain” with our vehicles still prevails. In exchange for the “freedom” of our cars, we’ve been willing to risk losing our lives; the lives of our loved ones; and friends, a list which for me now also includes a hugely talented writing colleague whose life was snuffed out one night by a driver running a red light as my friend was returning home from comforting his daughter during a crisis.
The problem is this: since those early 20th century days when we first traded our love of life for our love of cars, we’ve designed our culture’s physical infrastructure for motor vehicles, not people, and I’ve always resented the fact that we didn’t decide to provide alternatives for those who didn’t want to drive (or people who can’t drive, like the elderly and children) that are more convenient (which rules out buses); less expensive; and, yes, far more safe.
Of course, the Los Angeles megalopolis and even many parts of the Inland Empire were once serviced by the electrically powered and far less polluting Red Cars, which both my parents would recall with fondness, but, in a well-known story, a conspiracy between oil and tire companies, plus other “vested” interests like Triple A, saw to it that all the tracks were torn up by the 1960s.
I once read somewhere that the motor vehicle is, essentially, the greatest invention yet for the consumption of natural resources—someone’s wry definition that’s difficult to argue with since that breathtaking consumption is fairly impossible to estimate once you consider all that’s been devoured by our car culture in the last century: all the rubber; all the metals; all the oil; all the gasoline; and all the other raw materials which we’ve squandered.
And if you want a stark visual reminder of that statement about resources, just go to some natural area—or some back road empty fields, or a ravine—and view all the used tires left there because they’re not profitable for individuals to recycle, and then weep at the waste.
In the final analysis, the car culture’s proven to be a profoundly selfish; tragic; and colossal blunder both for humans; the many animals killed; and the environment itself since the decision that our “convenience” is more important than even the air we breathe, which has been turned into a common dumping ground for toxic gases that destroy our lungs; the atmosphere; and even life itself.
Yes, perhaps it might take another 100 years or more to build the infrastructure for the sort of close-knit communities that inspire walking, biking, jogging (or low-speed electric vehicles for those who need them), where no one dies, and we vastly improve our physical health in the bargain, but it needs to be done.
Many more lives have been lost or brutally diminished in the years since I saw my father’s client limping into his office some four decades ago, and it remains to be seen if we’ll commit to a transformation of our transportation systems where another future is possible. Or will we continue with the status quo, destroying both all those lives in “accidents,” and our life-giving atmosphere with tailpipe pollution, rendering any possibility for a healthier tomorrow a moot point.
It will be done either the painful way: when we’re forced to do it, or the easy way: voluntarily, but, either way, the choice, as always, is ours.

Phill Courtney was a high school English teacher, and while he still drives his 1970 VW Bug, he tries to run to as many places as he can. His email is pjcourtney1311@gmail.com