Protest World Car-Free Day -- Take a Drive (Just for the Hell of It)!
Release:
CEI Urges People to Celebrate ‘Automobility’
Washington, D.C., September 21, 2010 — Here we go again – another year, another “World Car-Free Day,” the annual day (Wednesday, September 22) dedicated to life without the automobile. In response, the Competitive Enterprise Institute urges people to protest - by taking a drive, just because.
“The automobile has improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in remarkable ways,” said Sam Kazman, CEI General Counsel. “It has taken the mobility once reserved for aristocrats and democratized it, immensely expanding the choices that average people have regarding where to live and work. Instead of pushing a misguided political agenda to reduce car use, we should be celebrating automobility,” said Kazman.
As University of Virginia philosophy professor Loren Lomasky noted in his automobile study for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Autonomy and Automobility, the car is one of the three most liberating technologies ever developed.
Walking and biking have health and lifestyle benefits for many people, but the sponsors of World Car-Free Day are going beyond simply advocating lifestyle changes - they are urging politicians to restrict car use and instead promote mass transit systems that will require ever-expanding taxpayer subsidies. In contrast to the photographs on various Car-Free Day websites, which show healthy young people in picture-perfect weather, advocates of car-free living ought to be portray what it would mean in more realistic conditions, such as:
When it's raining
When you’re carrying several bags of groceries
When you’re carrying a baby, with a toddler alongside you
On crutches
After midnight
Without using a car or cab to get to the train or bus station
