Cars in Everyday Life - Essay Example

Cars in Everyday Life Student’s name University name Date of submission Cars in Everyday Life Cars never existed until 1870. Since then, the number of cars on our roads has been increasing rapidly with millions of people around the world now owning cars. Current statistics indicate that at least 75% of families living in developed countries own more than one car (Hart & Parkhurst 2011). If we try to imagine how ancient life was without cars, we appreciate the technological advancements that have taken place in the motor vehicle industry. Our lives are full of travels from one place to another for a variety of reasons using cars as our major travel vessels. Whether in a private or a public vehicle, people are in need of travelling in a free and comfortable atmosphere which is provided by the modern generation cars. Majority of people living in the world today hav’nt considered cars as their daily necessities of moving around. Cars are used in the everyday living for running errands, driving to work and visiting a friend’s house. It is unreasonable to see people moving down the grocery store which might just be miles away from their home by driving rather than just walking or cycling. People with this kind of habits are perceived as making use of cars for granted. In the olden days, people had to walk for long distances to get what they wanted. In other cases, one had to travel by foot for several days in order to access some necessities of life. The invention of the wheel was meant to make movement faster and efficient especially where long distances were involved (Hart & Parkhurst 2011). However, it appears that the original purpose of wheel-driven vessels has since changed, making people lazy. The use of cars in simple routine activities is being viewed as a kind of addiction. Using or misusing an everyday object simply because of its presence is what makes cars appear addictive. People are more concerned about the state of their cars than they are about their health. Cars have weakened human bodies in the essence that they do not find time to exercise their physical fitness (Blincoe, et al. 2014). Take an example of a person who is driving from home to work every Monday to Friday and sits in the office all day. She/he does get an opportunity to exercise his/her feet by waking a few miles a day or even once in a week. Individuals have become so much obsessed with the daily activities where cars are involved as opposed to taking care of their physical beings. Most modern generation cars are automatic in nature where less energy is used in propelling the cars. For instance, in manual cars, both feet are involved during the driving exercise whereas in automatic cars, one foot tends to be so much lazy since the gear is automatic. In a biologist point of view, a body part experiences growth and strength when constantly used while becomes smaller and weaker when dormant (Newman 2013). This implies that one who drives an automatic car on daily basis has un-proportional feet. A part from individuals who own and drive cars on a daily basis, there are those who neither own nor drive cars but use them for daily commuting. Cars or buses have become part of their daily living and in essence without them, there would be no daily income. According to the cognitive theory of everyday life, it is stated that life is characterized by conscious purposiveness. The purposiveness is partly revealed in the organization of human thoughts and actions and in the conscious awareness. The everyday actions are what our thoughts and memory has registered and become part of our daily lives (Newman 2013). This can explain why if today all the non-renewable fuel products for locomotives are exhausted; people will have to find other means of survival. Since the only way does not exist and their minds are fixed to the idea, then they will live by this fact. This can help us understand that people do most things in their daily lives because they are available and accessible (Miller 2010). Cars have enabled fast travelling from city to city, state to state and even country to county. Were it not for the cars, our eyes would not have seen any distance further than our local places of living. Currently, there are millions of cars around various cities in the world. We have to appreciate the fact that they have made our lives more efficient than before their invention. However, the motor vehicle technology is seen to be affecting human psychology (Hart & Parkhurst 2011). Cars are being manufactures for comfort and luxury rather than just for the purpose of saving time and energy. After every duration of time, car manufacturing companies introduce new models of cars. These models bear features that are more attractive as compared to that of a normal car. The act has made people to own cars as fashions and identity. The financial position of a person can be identified by the model of a car that she/he drives. This has affected the reasons people have to make achievements in their daily living (Miller 2008). Every individual would tell you of their dream cars whether they are sure or not of ever owning the cars. However, we may tend to imagine if someone’s dream car will be the model after a two year period when, probably, they can afford to buy a different model at the time. This is because of the changing face of modern car. Should we also say that cars have disrupted our need for ‘freedom of walking?’ Their number happens to be more than that of pedestrians around the streets. The cars occupy a lot of space every day in the cities with the streets appearing squeezed once these locomotive vessels start flocking our cities. We have to walk carefully to avoid being knocked down and waste our time giving way for the cars at pedestrian crossing points every time we visit the cities. Does it not appear that the cars are enslaving us rather than serving us in all time and places? This question cannot be easily answered but can drive us into looking into other ways in which cars have affected our daily lives. Everyday, lives are lost on our roads by virtue of accidents that are caused by cars. In America for, instance, more than 40, 000 lives are lost every year on roads. This portrays a negative picture of what we usually see as positive in our daily living. Cars make our lives easy, but at the same time cut our lives short. Road accidents have psychologically affected people every time they happen to be on a highway. This mentality develops fear in people and only the courageous can drive or walk comfortably through a public highway (Hart & Parkhurst 2011). Cars are silently affecting our sources of income. The government has designed cities to suit those who own cars and impose car taxes on parking lots. At the same time, there are many tax impositions for car owners and those operating commercial cars for use of public roads. The final sufferer is always the consumer who, in most cases, is the common and the poor citizen. In essence, we all pay tax indirectly through the value added tax imposed on everything that we buy on daily basis. Cars have brought divisions in our social status of life. Those who own, especially the luxurious types of cars tend to identify themselves and separate themselves from other people. The social stratification brought about by this car trends have affected most people especially while visiting some prominent places where walking by foot qualifies suspicion. One can feel alienated whenever they walk on foot in places that everyone drives (Picca, Starks & Gunderson 2013). In the post-modern theory, it is stated that there are no new ways of doing things and that the old ways are the ones reproduced to come up with new styles. It may imply that people are evolving to the modernization world by adding the knowledge they have to come up with more advanced ways of living (Vaneigem & Nicholson-Smith 2012). In reference to the car, the concept of the wheel has since remained since its invention with the models of the cars changing. This idea can be viewed as having affected people’s reasoning with regards to aspects of technology. They tend to perceive the aspects of technology as expected. As the world continues to become more modernized, people become even more lazy. This is because they can efficiently acquire whatever they want. They do not involve much of their physical efforts in searching for anything. Cars have played a bigger role in contributing to this type of laziness (Picca, Starks & Gunderson 2013). When we talk of cars in our daily lives, we cannot forget to talk of environmental issues revolving around the use of cars. The air in the cities is not as fresh as that in a forest or any region that is isolated from motor vehicle operations. Motor vehicle emissions have polluted our environment with gases that are harmful to our health. Since no single day passes without one coming across a car, she/he is affected by some breath of motor vehicle fuel. Some of the motor vehicle fuel are leaded which makes them effective to our health (Blincoe, et al. 2014). After talking on the ways cars affect our normal lives, the next aspect is to imagine how the world would finally look if everybody was in a position to own one. Would there be restrictions to drive through cities, the maximum number of cars that an individual can own or would there be more cars than we actually need? These are just but a few questions that can indicate controversy on the use of cars across the globe. This assessment can provide some understanding on why the current generation of individuals is being affected by cars as part of their daily lives. In simple terms, it can be concluded by saying that need for cars in the modernized world are weightier than the negative implications of cars, hence, cars will still be very helpful in our daily lives. Bibliography Blincoe, L., Miller, TR., Zaloshnja, E., & Lawrence, BA 2014, The economic and societal impact of motor vehicle crashes, 2010 (No. DOT HS 812 013) Hart, J., & Parkhurst, G 2011, Driven to excess: Impacts of motor vehicles on the quality of life of residents of three streets in Bristol UK. World Transport Policy & Practice, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 12-30. Miller, D 2010, Anthropology in Blue Jeans: American Ethnologist Vol. 37, no. 3: pp. 415-428. Miller, D 2008, The Comfort of Things. Cambridge: Polity. Newman, DM 2013, Sociology: Exploring the architecture of everyday life. Sage Publications. Picca, LH., Starks, B., & Gunderson, J 2013, ‘’It Opened My Eyes” Using Student Journal Writing to Make Visible Race, Class, and Gender in Everyday Life. Teaching Sociology, vol. 41, no 1, pp. 82-93. Vaneigem, R., & Nicholson-Smith, D 2012, The revolution of everyday life. PM Press. Read More