My Perspective by Robert Seidler

“To survive and thrive as a culture we will have to move away from the marketers as the means to our choices and towards education, personal research and logic”  ~ SR

In-Car-ceration

With about 1% of out nation behind bars, what is going on?  First a lot of drinking — but joking aside 1% of your friends or relatives are in prison, good healthcare, food, exercise, time to read and no gas bills.  Who is in prison, is it us instead?

My issue is the real in-car-ceration, the vehicular type.  The other 99% of us are locked into this barless cell constantly trading off health and biological activity for healthcare.  Constantly feeding our cars by the gallon and our kids as we can.

We would walk more, bike more and live more if only we could.  Becoming road kill just like the ones we see each morning as we are driving to work is negative reinforcement.  We are animals too, and Florida is second in the nation in both bike and pedestrian injuries and fatalities.

I was visiting Colorado recently and noticed that their pedestrian laws are stated everywhere, big signs and big fines, and they are enforced.  Cars just stop when the walker nears the curb, but that RV  that almost pancaked me still did not.   Yeah, for a moment I got it and yes, it was from Florida!

We have to make humanity King and Queen again, not our method of motorized SOV transportation.  Real laws, enforced, applied and arrested for.  Make the pedestrians rule the streets and the car take the orders.  Let us incarcerate the cars!  We can just starve them for energy, make them shrivel and die or we can wait for 8 bucks a gallon gas.  Fill up that 22 gallon tank 3 times a week, $528.00, who will starve?

{sidebar id=1}We must take back the streets, keep our money and earn our health again through exercise and activity.  We imprisoned ourselves through our addictions.  Yes, we are addicts; oil addicts and car addicts, and addicts need counseling.

We have been programmed for 50 some years now on the merits of our car based society.  The program now is dysfunctional and outdated.  Look around you at the round people with achy joints fueled by gravity’s oppression.  Look at the monies the drug companies make off of us.  Look at the system that is set up to make you feel good and happy, the prescription drug based system augmented with alcohol.  Activity, creativity and exercise still can do that with the natural drugs from our body and brain.

Heroine, cocaine, meth all are nothing compared to the damage oil has done to us a culture.

How do we start?  Fill your car up, but with people.  Ride share, add a bike rack and use that bike for the short trip once dropped off at that central location by your driver.

If every one of the people going from here to there each day had at least 4 people in their cars there would be 75% less autos on the trip and no, and I mean NO traffic jams.

It is not a roadway issue; it is an attitudinal and economic one.  If you want money and health the car must begin to be left behind.

Robert Seidler is a Filmmaker and Green Guide that lives in Sopchoppy.  He has been producing Traffic Safety materials since 1984.  Seidlerproductions.com

This article originally published on September 13, 2008.

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