Divorce Your Car!: Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile

I'm moving out of state next year and won't be taking my car with me. Life will probably be more difficult in some ways but it's worth it. When you read about cars and study about them and think about them, it's really unbelievable the amount of death, destruction, and suffering that they've caused over the last hundred years. I've read a lot of anti-car books and this is one of the better ones. It's very thorough while not being too dry or academic like some of the others. Read this book and you'll learn things that will surprise you, like how much money it really costs a society when it uses cars as its main form of transportation. And don't forget perhaps the greatest tragedy of all. Cars gave rise to one of the lowest forms of life that the human race has ever known - the car salesman!

Alvord makes a very convincing argument for divorcing your car. So convincing, in fact, that my husband and I will likely divorce our one and only car in the coming months.Divorce Your Car explains the obvious--how divorcing your car will save money and help protect the environment. More intriguing, though, is the explanation of how divorcing your car will actually save you time.How can divorcing your car save time, you wonder? Alvord factors in not just how long it takes to get somewhere (by car versus by other modes of transit), but also how much time you have to spend working to pay for all the costs associated with a car. When all is said and done, the car doesn't move any faster than a bike.While Alvord does mention that walking and biking instead of driving have health benefits, her calculations of time don't include another big factor working against the car--making time for exercise. Many people complain that they don't have "time" for exercise. I used to complain about this too. But now that I bike virtually every day, making time for exercise is a non-issue. It may take me 20 minutes to bike somewhere I could get to by car in 10 minutes, and ditto for the return trip. But if I had to find another 40 minutes each day to exercise (plus time to drive to and from the gym!)...geez, no wonder I didn't used to have time to exercise.By ditching the car, you can save enough money to work less (Alvord has some inspiring examples) and easily work exercise into your daily routine. As an added perk, you even get to help save the planet. What's not to like!

We live in "a drive-in, drive-up, drive-thru, and drive-by society" (p. 57), and the urban sprawl of a city in which I live, Phoenix, is no exception. There is no escaping the problem of the automobile, even in our country's national parks. For instance, there are 7000 parking spaces in Yosemite (700 per mile), and 12,000 parking spaces in Yellowstone (p. 41). In many ways, America's addiction to cars is easily comparable to cigarette addiction.The premise of Alvord's well-reasoned and well-researched book is that "we are addicted to our cars, and the relationship is fundamentally unhealthy for ourselves, our environment, and ultimately (and ironically) our economy" (p. xiii). In the Introduction to her compelling book, she writes, "divorce from a car is not only possible, it can bring unexpected delights and great rewards. On a collective level, divorcing cars can bring us clean air, clearer water, less noise, and friendlier communities. It can foster better transportation options, more compact cities, and correspondingly more farmland, wildlife habitat, and parks. On a personal level, it can be incredibly liberating, bringing less stress, more money, better health and fitness, reduced risk of accidental death, and a simpler lifestyle" (p. 5).The first five chapters of Alvord's book examine our seduction by the automobile, revealing "our union with the car is in part a forced marriage and not simply a free-market choice" (p. 7). The next five chapters consider "some of the symptoms of love sickness caused by our automotive marriage" (p. 63), air pollution, climate change, oil spills, water pollution, costly repairs, noise, obesity, road rage, social isolation, real expenses, and fatal car crashes. In the last seven chapters of her book, Alvord offers up real alternatives to the automobile, walking, bicycling, shared transportation, and telecommuting, for instance, before she addresses "the big quality-of-life advantages of driving less or even living without a car" (p. 125).G. Merritt

I've come to realize that driving my car is not only killing the planet, it's killing me. Each time I return from a car trip to town it takes a few hours to clear the stress-induced traffic jam in my nervous system caused by more and more cars and congestion, faster driving speeds and hurriedness, and the increasing impatience and aggressiveness of drivers. The worse it gets, the more I want out. This is the best book I've seen on the why and how of getting out of our cars and onto our bikes, feet, and public transport. It's not preachy or fanatical, and presents the reader with a number of options ranging from keeping your car but using it less (a car-lite lifestyle), to going entirely car free. I'm now finding that this book's core message of driving less and enjoying life more really can work.