Peak Car’s Impending Arrival Has a Deadly Side Effect
For the increasing number of pedestrians who are becoming victims of America’s love affair with big vehicles, the future of mobility can’t come soon enough.
No contest.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Bloomberg Businessweek has laid out what “peak car” will look like, as “new forms of mobility are making privately owned vehicles obsolete.” Peak car isn’t here yet, though, and before it arrives, the U.S. fleet will keep getting older, bigger and more dangerous for anyone not inside a vehicle.
Fifty years ago, the average age of a passenger car in the U.S. was 5.6 years. It’s double that now. Light trucks were older in 1970, at 7.3 years, and their average age is now the same as cars. Cars keep getting better, as I’ve noted before, and that means they last longer.