In praise of slow cars
by Lloyd Alter
Carbon Upfront!
The size an style of these vehicles will not make you embrace them as an alternative form of transportation. The concept is solid though. The savings to be achieved is realistic. The impact on our environment would be enormous.
It is about time America abandons the too big, too fast, and too often phase we have in our heads.
Doug Ford, the Premier of the Province of Ontario where I live, is trying to kill us. At the same time as he is closing hospitals, he is making beer and wine available at corner stores (we used to have to get wine from the government-run liquor stores and beer from special beer stores). And now, he has increased the speed limits on some highways by 10 km/hr. His trained seals, who repeat everything they are told to tweet, say, “Under the leadership of “Fordnation,” our government continues to stand up for drivers.”
10 km/hr isn’t much (6.2 MPH), and everyone drives 20 over the limit anyway, but it speaks volumes. The speed limits were dropped to 100 in 1976 to save energy, following the American reduction to 55 MPH, but it also saved lives; according to the Ottawa Citizen,
“A major study of [American] driving records by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety from 1993-2017 also revealed some harsh realities. The report said that 36,760 deaths would have been prevented if limits had not risen — including more than 13,000 on interstates and 23,000 on smaller roadways.”
When British Columbia raised the speed limit by 10km/hr in 2014, the number of fatal crashes doubled. But hey, this is “standing up for drivers.”
The original reason for lowering the speed limit was to reduce fossil fuel consumption; the lives saved were an unexpected byproduct. But that doesn’t matter to Doug Ford; he is part of a world that worships speed and energy consumption. As Vaclav Smil noted in his book Energy and Civilization, all of human development has basically followed a pattern of increased intensity of energy usage, and civilization has basically been a quest for higher energy use. And we are not using the energy rationally:
“Urban car driving, preferred by many because of its supposedly faster speed, is a perfect example of an irrational energy use…. with well-to-wheel efficiencies well below 10%, cars remain a leading source of environmental pollution; as already noted, they also exact a considerable death and injury toll.”
Smil believes we have to move toward a less energy-intensive society, but it won’t be easy.
“Such a course would have profound consequences for assessing the prospects of a high-energy civilization—but any suggestions of deliberately reducing certain resource uses are rejected by those who believe that endless technical advances can satisfy steadily growing demand.”
Slow Movements
A low-energy civilization is invariably a slower civilization.
That’s one reason so many slow movements have developed around the world, starting with food. The slow food movement “was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”
Other slow movements that I wrote about in now-deleted Treehugger posts (but I got in my archives!) included:
Slow cities– “According to Der Spiegel, “Slow City” advocates argue that small cities should preserve their traditional structures by observing strict rules: cars should be banned from city centers; people should eat only local products and use sustainable energy.”
Slow Travel: “It is happening in Sweden, where 8,000 charter trips were offered this summer, “not just eager eco-travel buffs snapping up the train charter trips, but also a heretofore untapped group of travelers afraid to fly, as well as recent retirees who are nostalgic for the longer train trips of their childhood.”
Slow Fashion, meaning “clothing and accessories that start with thoughtfully chosen beginnings, are constructed by well-paid individuals, and are meant to remain wearable for years to come.”
Slow Design, “much like its gastronomic predecessor, is all about pulling back on the reins and taking time to do things well, do them responsibly, and do them in a way that allows the designer, the artisan and the end user to derive pleasure from it.”
And my contribution to the genre,
As cars have gotten safer, they have gotten bigger and heavier and way more expensive. In my last years of driving my 1989 Miata, I was terrified to be on the highway; it felt like I could drive under the pickup trucks. About 15 years ago, I admired the BMW Isetta of the 1950s and wondered,
“Perhaps, like the slow food movement, we need a slow car movement, a radical lowering of the speed limit so that the private car can survive in an era of peak oil and global warming, simply by being smaller and slower.”
Being slow, they wouldn’t need all the stuff we build into cars and trucks that go fast, like crush zones and airbags, although, as Mercedes subsequently demonstrated with the Smart Car, tiny cars can be safe.
They take up less space, cost less to buy ($1048 in 1958 dollars is $11,319 today, still cheap!) and have much lower upfront carbon emissions. In our new all-electric world, they could have much smaller batteries.
It’s not like you are stuck in the city, either; the whole world is your oyster.
A few years later, when self-driving cars were just showing up on the radar, Alex Steffen wrote The Future of Cars is Slow. He did the math:
“The danger drivers pose to pedestrians, other drivers and themselves is largely a function of how fast their vehicle is traveling. An eighteen wheeler nudging you gently at 1 foot per minute is an inconvenience; one hitting you at 45 miles per hour is probably a death sentence. Slow cars are safer, and when you own a fleet of them in a highly litigious society, safe is a business advantage.”
“Reaction times are shorter the faster a vehicle is going. Even if the “driver” is an algorithm, reaction times count — and for physics reasons alone a car moving 15-20 miles per hour is going to be way easier to safely navigate down a busy street with drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians moving through it than one going 45 miles an hour.”
He pointed out that there were many other benefits, including cheaper infrastructure:
“Roads built for heavy vehicles moving fast are more expensive and wear out quicker than roads designed for light vehicles and slow speeds (there’s also evidence that slow roads are easier to engineer with less polluting and more permeable materials).”
Another benefit of having slow cars is that it will create demand for fast alternatives. Those infrastructure savings could be invested in alternatives to driving. To his credit, Doug Ford’s government is bringing back rail in the north-south corridor that spouse Kelly drives me through when we go north for the summer, which used to be regularly serviced by trains.
“This photograph was taken at the south end of the Bala Summer train station platform, looking north. Most of the people on the platform are women or young men, so they are likely awaiting the Friday evening arrival of the men on the “Weekend Special” train from Toronto.”
Fast trains could be a viable alternative to driving, much as they were 100 years ago.
We have to do something! When I was in Detroit recently, I was astonished at how big cars and trucks being sold as normal transportation had become. I would have trouble climbing into this.
This, seen in New York at the TWA hotel, was far easier for me to get into.
Surely, we have to end this arms race of bigger trucks travelling at higher speeds down wider highways and perhaps slow down and think about what we are doing here. I may have my tongue in cheek with the Isetta, but there is probably a happy medium.
And perhaps Doug Ford should consider the inevitable result of combining higher speeds, more accessible alcohol, and fewer doctors.
Driving faster increases road damage – and so does driving in heavier vehicles. Road damage increases exponentially with vehicle weight, by the fourth power. Thus a vehicle that weighs twice as much as yours causes 2^4 = 16 times as much road damage as yours does.
@Bob,
I read your link in its entirety. It clearly states a claim that more weight=more road damage, which seems intuitively obvious to me, but good to have evidence. I thought taxes reflected weight for trucks.
What I didn’t see was even a single reference to driving faster increasing road damage. I don’t understand the physics of that, but happy to be educated. Can you point out where your link makes that case with evidence?
Bob:
Is Illinois still issuing license plates by weight of pickup trucks and trucks and a different plate for cars?
Maybe this might explain?
If you have a 20 ton truck sitting stationary on the road, it’s exerting 20 tons of force on the roadway. If that truck is traveling at 100km/hr, it is still exerting 20 tons of force on the road.
I’m sure this is why your friend says that weight is the only factor that matters. The truck stopping or starting isn’t even a major concern because that happens infrequently and randomly on the road. Intersections and the roads around them might need to be stronger because of the constant braking and acceleration, but that’s about it.
But that’s only for straight roads.
On bumps and curves, speed is going to matter because speed + weight = momentum. The inflection point of any bumps or elevation changes in the road will have more force on them as speed increases, and curves in the road will have more lateral (or perpendicular if the road is banked) forces as speed increases.
If a road develops a slight depression, faster vehicles will hit it harder which could make it grow faster than slower traffic.
That said, trying to add variable speeds to the calculations might be too complex or error prone for the engineers. Using a static weight might be the best they can do accurately.
@Bill,
Thanks. That certainly makes sense. I don’t know how the effects of speed+mass vs just mass ultimately compare, particularly on interstate highways that are mostly straight and where a lot of over-the-road trucking happens. Nothing about speed was mentioned in Bob’s link.
i would suggest that speed matters. can’t offfer evidence or even a compelling argument. but there is probably no such thing as perfect no-slip contact between road and tire even on straight road constant speed…and no such thing as a perfectly level road even over a few feet.
and consider this…when you are going faster you are pushing harder at least against the air, that means your tires are pushing harder against the road, deforming more and heating more. that said, neither tires nor roads wear out all that fast considering what they are subject to.
i am pretty sure if you look it up you will find that engineers are quite capable of doing the calculations.
well, google says i am wrong. i still have my doubts, but i’ll give you this: the’tracks’ that form on highways…you can see them in the rain… turn out to be not caused by “wear”…that is loss of road material, but by “plastic deformation,” or so i was told by a highway engineer who seemed very pleased by that answer.
that said, if you are just looking for an excuse to drive a faster car…there are other things to consider. in my state they want to raise the tax on small cars because they use less fuel and so don’t pay enough in gasoline taxes to maintain the roads. or so they say, in their big cars.