Jeremy Felt

Rant: Our Relationship With Automobiles

I was going to discuss our complete inability to control the modern automobile sufficiently, but it expanded on it’s own. Now you get a few things for the price of one….

Cars. You would think that we could have figured them out by now. It’s been 90 years since the first assembly line in Michigan started cranking out Fords like crazy. They’ve gotten “safer”, faster, easier to manuver, better overall.

Ok, so think about that for a few seconds.

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We’ve had 90 years as a car buying public to figure out how to use the damn things. Somehow, we still suck at it.

80 years since some form of the stop light was invented, we still find ourselves believing that if we run the red, we’ll make it to our destination an hour faster.

170 years since the first form of an electric car was invented and we still think it’s cool to gobble up natural resources like they’re going out of style.

If you believe in creation and wanted to convince some more evolution minded people that they were wrong, explain this to them…. why haven’t we adapted to the use of something so simple. All it does is go forward, backward, and turn a bit. Don’t even think we could comprehend how to manage a flying car. Darwin would be pissed.

Of course, if you believe in creation, you still have to wonder if God sucked at driving too and that’s why we’re like this.

We Americans are too spoiled… imagine if gas prices had actually followed normal inflation, then you would have a pretty decent reason to carpool to work. Nobody likes paying $4.00/gallon to drive around. It would be worth it if our cars all got 60 miles to the gallon, but that doesn’t happen. Say you drive to work 15 miles every day. Round trip of 30 miles. You drive a gas powered Honda that’s a couple years old, get 30 miles to the gallon. Currently it costs you about $2.00 a day to go to work. 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, $500 in gas just to work. That’s not so bad, but that’s also only putting 7500 miles on your car. Who really does that? 10 or 15,000 is probably more like it. An even grand spent on gas every year. Inflation would make that $2,000. That’s getting up there. If you make $30k a year, that’s about 10 percent of your take home salary after taxes… supposed to give that to the church. Now imagine paying the prices that Europe pays.. $6 a gallon. $3,000 or 15 percent of your take home salary is gone. Don’t you love it. So next time somebody asks if you’re proud to be an American, let them know that you at least
don’t mind the gas prices.

STOP BUYING SUVs, you are part of the problem.