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From the perspective of a deliberate non-driver, the car is indefensible. It’s the devil’s chariot, death on wheels, the ultimate privatised commodity. Motorists, meanwhile, believe car ownership to be a right.

The authors of After the Car, both sociologists in the field of mobilities – the study of how people, things and information move and get moved – are firmly in the “devil’s chariot” camp. Dennis and Urry exhibit a refreshing understanding of the sheer inefficiency and inconvenience of cars, describing them bluntly as “steel-and-petroleum” machines, and roads as the “killing fields” of contemporary societies.

…The authors present several scenarios in which the car system will be affected by increasingly scant resources and human attempts to limit damage caused by climate change. The most frightening, for its depressing plausibility, is that of “regional warlordism”, based on the fight for post-peak oil. We may already be living in this period.

More enlightened, but less likely unless governments are prepared to tell voters things they don’t want to hear, is the model of “local sustainability”, in which all travel, but especially car travel, is reduced hugely and people return to living in compact urban neighbourhoods and getting around on foot.

Guardian