I can only speak from my own experience, but I think sometimes when people defend cars, it’s because they feel that it isn’t actually cars being attacked, but them/their choices judged.

I personally don’t really like cars. I would much rather walk or bike places, I feel more free when I can get somewhere on my own power, not restricted by traffic or gas prices or parking. I thought, because I was a substitute teacher and sometimes wouldn’t get a call about a job until school was already starting, or would have to be at two different schools across town in one day, that not having a car just wasn’t an option if I wanted to work enough to pay my bills. But my life changed for the better when I decided that I would consider anywhere I could get within an hour ‘walking distance’ and I discovered that while I did get fewer jobs at first, I got to know the people in the schools that I was closest to and they started to call me first. It worked out ok but it was a risk. I only did it after I knew I’d worked enough teaching days already that month to cover my minimums, and that eventually expanded to all the time.

But then I had kids. Everyone told me I needed a car. I did baby wearing, and transit, and walked pushing my stroller all over town. It took planning but it was also ok, until I had to go back to work. It wasn’t compatible with getting a child to the only daycare spot I could find, and then a teaching day in some unknown place possibly anywhere in town. There were too many hills for me to manage even on a bike with a bike trailer. Eventually I found a daycare spot a few blocks from home and I could go back to getting just about anywhere, because that’s pretty easy when it’s just you needing transport.

I moved to the lower mainland for a full time permanent job. I found an apartment and daycare all within a few blocks of my school. And then I was well and truly foiled by getting pregnant again, this time with twins. They were born premature. I had to be transferred from the local hospital to a larger one 30 km away. That was the closest hospital with a NICU capable of keeping my babies alive. I had to have a C-section because my smaller baby couldn’t tolerate the contractions and his heart rate kept dropping. I was left with two babies hospitalized for 3 months, 30km by highway away from my home, having had major abdominal surgery, and with a 4 year old at home. There weren’t public transit options to get to the hospital. 30 km away was “too close” to qualify for hospital accommodations, or even assistance with making the trip once I was medically able to drive again.

So, yes, when people talk about how cars are only about convenience or are “unnecessary if you plan your life accordingly” I have to call ********. And yes, if we as a society had not created and allowed and even encouraged such car dependence, I wouldn’t have been in that situation. That doesn’t change that I was, and there was nothing I could do except drive to that hospital every day. Individuals can do their best to free themselves from car culture but we can’t individually solve the systemic problems of car dependence. I was extremely lucky that I did have access to a car, or my most affordable next option would have been taxi rides for $80 each way, or not seeing my babies.

And I haven’t even gotten to the problems with trying to transport twins with additional medical concerns to all the various specialists they had to see, who were of course in the community where the hospital was, not where I lived. Transporting twins in general is just a real challenge. If we really want to address car dependence, there needs to be more and better advocacy for accessibility issues like sidewalks that stay level, with ramps on the curb not in the sidewalk. And ramps onto the sidewalk at all parts of a corner, and at all pedestrian walkways. Transit buses with wide enough entry ramps. Sidewalks that are wide enough. I have a new appreciation for the challenges that wheelchair users face when it comes to getting anywhere - into any building, through a parking lot, down a street. My accessibility challenges are temporary but no less real - you can’t just leave one baby on the street while you carry one up a set of stairs in a building with no elevator or one that is out of service.

I would love to return to a life of less/no car dependence but my ability to do that under my current circumstances just isn’t entirely up to me. I think most people don’t try to poke holes in my situation but I hear a lot of the proposed solutions to car dependence as heavy taxes on car use and large vehicles - and once again, I bristle because guess who has to drive a ridiculously enormous SUV because accommodating 3 car seats for 3 kids under 5 can’t be done in just any vehicle. Especially when two have to be rear facing.

Anyway, sometimes people defend cars because they really don’t have other choices that will meet their needs - even when they don’t especially like cars. And I would love to see a world where a parent can easily and safely get everywhere they and their children need to go, without a car, and still be able to accomplish whatever the task of their trip was, but that is just not a simple problem with simple solutions. It is complex and multifaceted and highly specific to individual situations and would require a major overhaul to both building and road infrastructure as well as societal expectations and demands.

Cars are not people, but it’s people who drive them.