The Problem With Cars Is We Don't Get To Use Them

Does America actually *like* cars?

The other day I had a thought: it should be illegal to listen to Mario Kart music in your car. I mean, you try to follow the traffic laws with this playing in the background.

It’s a funny thing: one reason Mario Kart is fun is because it simulates, just a little bit, what it might be like to be able to go wild with an actual car. (Of course, it’s also just an absurd bit of fun; a more realistic racing game, without blue shells and speed-up mushrooms and bombs, doesn’t give you quite the same rush.)

But it’s fun, nonetheless, to pretend you’re really behind a wheel. There’s a reason steering-wheel controllers are popular for home game consoles, and that racing games in arcades feature not only wheels but mock vehicle cabs and simulator-style moving seats. They’re trying to make you feel like you’re really piloting a vehicle.

Part of the allure of this is that you typically can’t do it with a real car. Partly because one collision in a real car triggers hundreds or thousands of dollars in repairs. And even more importantly because you’ll kill or injure yourself or someone else. But that’s because there are very few places one can truly use a car recreationally. There are few places where one is allowed to unbottle the car’s potential, to enjoy it as an incredible machine. (Or, conversely, to find out just how many miles per hour over 100 your car has printed on its speedometer that it can’t actually achieve. A friend of a friend back in college once unadvisedly took a Prius rental car to about 100, and we could all smell an electric burning motor smell.) But anyway.

The car is so absurdly overpowered for most of what we do with it, that it causes a chronic frustration. Driving a car in a suburban-sprawl environment is like listening to dance music and not being allowed to tap your feet. I don’t know if it’s true that Americans “love” cars. I think the Europeans love cars; they use them sparingly and reasonably in everyday life, but appreciate their performance in the right context, too.

It isn’t at all surprising to me that Europe has some of the world’s best walkable cities and also makes probably the world’s best supercars. The car is not compatible with the city, but this is not a judgment on either one. It’s simply like, say, observing that ketchup does not work well with chocolate ice cream. (I really hope nobody disagrees with that.)