What if all cars disappear?

What if all cars disappear?

How many cars are there in the world right now? It is estimated that in 2018, more than one billion passenger cars today roam the streets and roads of the world. The mark of one billion units was reached in 2010 for the first time in its history.

If the mass extinction of motorized vehicles were an instantaneous event, every driver and passenger of a car would be able to accelerate faster than on a road at speeds ranging from five to 90 miles per hour. You hear me: in the air. Finally, the acceleration of the car would be less than the force of gravity, and the unlucky passenger would crash on the cement, brutally injuring his body and, in all probability, would not come out alive.


If the cars of the world disappeared (suppose that no one was driving now, which has not happened for more than 50 years, practically since the end of the Second World War, but for questions, suppose), the effects of an imprudent world would become exponentially worse than you think. If you think that your morning commute is the worst part of your schedule, you are very wrong. As we deepen this fascinating thought.


To give you a fair idea of ​​our first issue, Stephen King wrote a short story in the 1970s entitled Trucks, which was later turned into a film called Maximum Overdrive in 1986. In this story, every car and every vehicle becomes aware and terrorizing. their owner is in a local restaurant/gas station. It is very well written and inspires reflection, I recommend it to fans of thrillers. But a story in a story stands out with a frightening surprise. While the main character wonders about his future, he says to himself: "Much of the world is paved now, even our playgrounds are paved ... little by little, they can reach the world of their choice.


Our world is paved, it's as simple as that. Paths, our number one method from point A to point B, are taken for granted every day. Almost every house is accessible by road. Finding an inaccessible home is unheard of and impractical. Garages are built in homes like shelves for a car. Driving is integrated into the infrastructure of our lives, it is the center of civilization. Cities are built around the highway. If all the cars disappeared, roads worth billions of dollars would be useless and we would have bulky sidewalks on which people could walk: an empty skeleton of what was once a magnificent transport route.


Wherever we go, we walk, drive or fly - unless you count the bike, the trains and the boats, which can belong to one of the three categories above, with the distance to the mind. In our daily life, walking is reserved for ridiculously short distances. We go to work, to school, to social activities. If you travel outside your city, it is incredible not to drive. Without cars in our lives, people would have a hard time going anywhere. Airports would be overwhelmed by ticket orders, pilots would be lost, exchanges and communication would be at a low ebb, as people have to travel to respond to these interactions.

In addition to our driving dependence, we need to drive to live, literally. In the United States, 35% of families grow gardens (Garden.org, A. Cort Sinnes, April 2014), which means that 65% of families are the main source of food in grocery stores and restaurants. For almost all grocery stores, supplies are shipped by car. Some of you may argue that for delivery of food abroad, airplanes deliver food, but delivery trucks take food from the plane to the stores. We have so much confidence in our vehicles that we let them manage our lives. For example, it is illegal to drive a car without auto insurance, but you can live without life insurance. The human race can not function without a car. They are in every aspect of our lives, an invention more powerful than the light bulb and as essential as the computer.

We need cars, and without them, we would not be here very long, so drive carefully.