“At least 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese.” World Health Organisation
Obesity is a key contributing factor in diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Worldwide obesity has more that doubled since 1980. Gosh, what could possibly be causing this terrible epidemic?
Well, this chart of obesity in the US is a clue – the increase in obesity mirrors the increase in motor vehicles almost exactly:
And this chart of obesity set against rates of cycling shows a clear negative correlation:
And a scientific study in 2008 looked specifically at the relationship between obesity and the way we travel. It said:
“The main finding of this study is that countries in Europe, North America, and Australia where active travel is most common have the lowest obesity rates, whereas those countries with the highest rates of car use for travel have the highest obesity rates.”
Of course all of this correlation does not actually prove that cars are making us fat. But even the cautious scientists spotted a potential causal link:
“A possible explanation for the observed findings is that the increased energy expenditure required by walking, cycling, and public transit contributes to low rates of obesity.”
And then the smoking gun:
“Supporting evidence for this view comes from the developing nation of China, where the use of automobiles is rapidly increasing. In the 1980s, very few households in China owned motor vehicles, but 14% of Chinese households acquired a motor vehicle between 1989 and 1997. Bell et al5 conducted a longitudinal study of 2485 adults (age 20 to 45 years) during this time period.
They found that Chinese men who acquired a car experienced a 1.8 kg greater weight gain and were twice as likely to become obese compared with men whose vehicle ownership remained unchanged. These findings held even after adjusting for diet.” Walking, Cycling, and Obesity Rates in Europe, North America, and Australia
This remarkable chart is the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. In their book The Spirit Level they show how a wide range of issues – from violence and imprisonment to obesity and educational achievement – are closely linked to equality of income.
Their startlingly clear conclusion is that more equal societies perform better in almost every important respect than less equal societies. Once a basic level of development is achieved it is not increases in income that improve a country’s performance but how the income is shared out.
And it is not just a poor underclass that suffers, unequal societies perform less well at every income level than more equal societies.
The direction of cause-and-effect is less clear and no doubt numerous factors are at play. Wilkinson and Pickett postulate that human psychology has an important role – they show that less equal societies are less trusting and have higher incidence of chronic anxiety and drug dependency.
One factor they don’t discuss is cycling. But perhaps they should. This is what happens when you plot bike use against income inequality:
More equal societies cycle more. So societies that cycle more have less violence, less obesity, less drug dependency, better educational attainment and more mutual trust.
Again, cause-and-effect are difficult to establish, but they probably flow in various self-reinforcing directions and via all sorts of other important factors, e.g. car use. But the basic relationship is undeniable. A cycling nation is a happy nation.
“Perhaps another marker of corroded social relations and lack of trust among people was the rapid rise in the popularity of the Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) …These are vehicles for the ‘urban jungle’, not the real thing.
Not only did the popularity of SUVs suggest a preoccupation with looking tough, it also reflected growing mistrust, and the need to feel safe from others. Josh Lauer, in his paper, ‘Driven to extremes’, asked why military ruggedness became prized above speed or sleekness, and what the rise of the SUV said about American society.He concluded that the trend reflected American attitudes towards crime and violence, an admiration for rugged individualism and the importance of shutting oneself off from contact with others – mistrust. These are not large vehicles born from a co-operative public-spiritedness and a desire to give lifts to hitch-hikers – hitch-hiking started to decline just as inequality started to rise in the 1970s. As one anthropologist has observed, people attempt to shield themselves from the threats of a harsh and untrusting society ‘by riding in SUVs, which look armoured, and by trying to appear as intimidating as possible to potential attackers’”
Motorways are an amazing achievement of the 20th century. They appeared from nowhere to span whole continents. These vast architectural constructions are great aspirational statements. Such scale requires single minded vision; no wonder then that they are a legacy of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
The first motorways – the autobahns – were built by the Nazis in the 1930s. By 1940 2,300 miles of “car only road” had been constructed. They were part of Hitler’s promise to ‘motorize’ Germany and were a powerful propoganda tool for the Nazis:
Motorways are interesting in that they take the motor car idea to the extreme. They were designed by people but not for people. Motorways were designed for motor cars. Walking, cycling, riding a moped, a horse or driving a horse-drawn cart or carriage were forbidden. And if you think of the motorway as the environment best adapted for the motor car you realise how very incompatible the needs of motor cars are with the needs of people.
We feel reasonably safe on the motorway as long as we are inside our car, in our insulated steel box, with its upholstered seats, the radio chatting to us. But if for any reason – out of fuel, flat tyre, faulty electrics – we have to stop and spend a few minutes outside we are plunged into a deeply hostile environment.
The imminent physical danger, the noise, the buffeting as traffic flys by, the smells, the lack of amenities, food or water, the absence of greenery, birds and other wildlife; it is neither civilised nor natural – a motorway is a Hellish place to be.
The official UK guidance on what to do if you are forced stop on a motorway is simply called ‘Survive‘. It says:
- Make sure that you and all occupants leave the vehicle by the left hand doors. Leave any animals in the vehicle.
- Do not attempt even simple repairs. Move to a safe area away from the carriageway. Keep children under control.
- If you feel at risk from another person, return to your vehicle by a left-hand door and lock all doors. Leave your vehicle again as soon as you feel this danger has passed.
- On average around one person per week is killed or seriously injured on the verge of the UK’s motorways
The point here is not that motorways are bad for people and other roads are good. The point is that all roads with cars are potentially nasty; what the extremism of motorways teaches us is that the better the road is adapted for cars, the nastier the environment is for people.
Even a 30mph road is an awful place to be once there are more than a few cars per minute. There is no way round it. People and cars don’t mix well, unless the one is assimilated by the other.
So all the money we spend on new, wider, smoother, faster roads is money spent on building places that are less and less fit for people, or any other forms of life, to be in. Where’s the sense in that?
Well, it still makes some political sense. ‘Motorization’ is still seen as a populist political card to play. It presents us – the electorate – with a diabolical deal: we gain (theoretically) easier movement between places, we lose all the places along the way. But the deal is tempting because it is usually just countryside or other peoples’ environments that are destroyed. The thing with diabolical deals is, of course, that eventually we all have to pay the price, as we create a more and more ruptured, dangerous, noisy, unliveable common space.
Almost everybody reading this will have, for most days of your life, through all forms of media, been presented with idealised images of cars. More often than not the cars are on empty, open roads. And just like Germans in the 1930s, we have all been regularly told that new cars and new roads are unqualified good news.In November 2011 the UK Chancellor, George Osborne, announced that, in spite of the supposedly dire public finances, several £billion will be spent on expanding road capacity in the coming years. The announcement was generally welcomed.
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” Adolf Hitler
“Noise is an underestimated threat that can cause a number of short- and long-term health problems, such as sleep disturbance, cardiovascular effects, poorer work and school performance and hearing impairment.
Noise has emerged as a leading environmental nuisance in the World Health Organisation European Region and the public complains about excessive noise more and more often.
How loud is too loud?
The WHO guidelines for community noise recommend less than 30 decibels (dB) in bedrooms during the night for a sleep of good quality and less than 35 dB in classrooms to allow good teaching and learning conditions.
How many people are affected?
According to a European Union publication:
about 40% of the population in EU countries is exposed to road traffic noise at levels exceeding 55 dB;
20% is exposed to levels exceeding 65 dB during the daytime; and
more than 30% is exposed to levels exceeding 55 dB at night.”
So traffic noise is a huge problem with chronic health impacts for large proportions of the population.
Great then that the BBC series ‘Bang Goes the Theory‘ recently recognised the importance of noise in our lives.
When it came to traffic noise, however, it all turned slightly bizarre. Rather than exploring this ‘underestimated threat’ the editorial slant was that cars are getting TOO QUIET.
Everything we do has wider political implications. But few everyday acts are more political than filling up the car with fuel.
The following is a table of all the countries that have more than 5bn confirmed barrels of oil remaining. Every time we fill up from now on we will be supporting the regimes at the top of this tree:
Of the top 10 in terms of both total oil and oil per person, only one – Canada – is free. In case you think this just reflects the world in general, 45% of countries are now considered free and only 24% ‘not free’.
Oil reserves correlate strongly with political repression. Cars use oil. So it goes.
Poland has one of the highest death rates in Europe from road traffic accidents.
Between 2005 and 2009 the typical day saw 14 or 15 people killed in horrific circumstances.
On average for every person killed on the roads about 10 are seriously injured. So around 144 people were also seriously injured every day in Poland.
Pointing this out in no way detracts from the import and seriousness of the rail accident that is currently being splashed across the media in Europe, in which 15 people died and 54 were injured.
The point is that we should take our everyday transport tragedies just as seriously.
Its relationship with the motor car is the typically complicated one of older British cities. Especially of the smaller regional centres that mistakenly bought into the ‘cars are the future‘ vision.
At least there are now a few pedestrianised streets, including in the sadly over-developed area around the magnificent 12th century Cathedral.
And the city’s latest act of faith is the equally magnificent Hepworth Wakefield. This new art gallery has rightly received great plaudits and huge visitor numbers. It is built next to a river, but it is the surrounding roads that offer the trials for the modern pilgrim. Let’s hope Wakefield builds on its brave investment and allows the beauty to spread from it.
Uppermill is a picturesque Northern village, especially so in the autumn. It’s a popular spot for local tourists.
Like many villages laid out in the late 19th century its main road is completely overloaded by today’s traffic. The high street is usually noisy and hazardous. The footpaths at the side are so narrow that people are regularly forced off them. This is what it normally sounds like:
Paradoxically when the village is at its most busy – as in these photos – the volume of pedestrians slows the traffic right down and it becomes a bit more pleasant. If you keep your wits about you.
But to really enjoy Uppermill, unfortunately for its shops and cafes, you have to leave the high street for another Victorian route – the canal and its towpath.
This remarkable chart is the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. In their book 
