Promoting walking and cycling as an alternative to using cars

Editor—Ogilvy et al's systematic review on promoting walking and cycling as an alternative to using cars treats motoring as if it were a disease that can be cured, without examining the social forces that lead to car use.¹ The effects they find in their review are hardly surprising, given the social currents opposing them: car advertising, predict and provide road planning, the giant car “park,” and other horrors of surburbia. Big business and big government alike have a vested interest in its continued growth.

Those who have bought into this motor dependent lifestyle can be trusted to extend the infliction of motor tyranny on everyone else: motorists object to being taxed, although they are major polluters, or confined by speed limits, although they killed 3508 people in Britain last year.

Figure 1.

Credit: STEPHEN SHEFFIELD/PHOTONICA

I try to undermine this metal carapaced horde. Any driver suffering from a condition in which lack of exercise is a factor: hypertension, obesity, stress, depression—much of the general practice caseload in fact—is told to sell their car and get a bike instead. I do have my successes—for example, a man in his 50s who came back to his follow up appointment, saying he wished he lived further from work so he had more time on his bike every day.

But when I look at the vested interests lined up against me—not least George W Bush's latest oil grab—I wonder why I bother. Urban doctors who continue to drive are particularly depressing. Since when do you need a car to carry a briefcase?