Since the start of the twentieth century, the role of cars in society has become highly important, though controversial. They are used throughout the world and have become the most popular mode of transport in many of the more developed countries. In developing countries cars are fewer and the effects of the car on society are less visible but still significant. The spread of cars built upon earlier changes in transport brought by railways and bicycles. They introduced sweeping changes in employment patterns, social interactions, infrastructure and the distribution of goods.

Automobiles provide easier, more comfortable access to remote places and mobility, helping people to geographically widen their social and economic interactions. Adverse effects of the car on everyday life are also significant. The introduction of the mass-produced car represented a revolution in industry and convenience, creating job demand and tax revenue. The resulting mobility transition also brought severe consequences to the society and to the environment.

The modern negative associations with heavy automotive use include the use of non-renewable fuels, a dramatic increase in the rate of accidental death, the disconnection of local community, the decrease of local economy, the rise in cardiovascular diseases, the emission of air and noise pollution, the emission of greenhouse gases, generation of urban sprawl and traffic, segregation of pedestrians and other active mobility means of transport, a shrinking railway network, urban decay, and the high cost per unit-distance of private transport.

Since many people do not have cars, the resulting inequality intensifies structural inequalities and causes irreparable damage to the environment. Hence, neglecting the negative externalities of private automobility is irresponsible, and replacing combustion engine vehicles with EVs is merely a strategy to lose more slowly from social and environmental points of view.

History

In the early 20th century, cars entered mass production. The United States produced 45,000 cars in 1907, but 28 years later, in 1935, that had increased nearly 90-fold to 3,971,000. The increase in production required a large new workforce. In 1913, 14,366 people worked for the Ford Motor Company, and by 1916 that had increased to 132,702. Bradford DeLong, an economic historian, noted that "Many more lined up outside the Ford factory for chances to work at what appeared to them to be, and (for those who did not mind the pace of the assembly line much) was an incredible boondoggle of a job". There was a surge in the need for workers at big, new high-technology companies such as Ford. Employment increased greatly.

When the motor age arrived in Western countries at the beginning of the 20th century, many conservative intellectuals opposed the increase in motor traffic on the roads. The new vehicles removed space for pedestrians and made walking more dangerous, with car collisions becoming a major cause of pedestrian deaths.

W.S. Gilbert, the famous British librettist, wrote to The Times on 3 June 1903:

Ten years later, Alfred Godley wrote a more elaborate protest, "The Motor Bus", a poem which cleverly combined a lesson in Latin grammar with an expression of distaste for the new form of motor transport.

Access and convenience

Worldwide, the car has allowed easier access to remote places. More people have gone to live in those remote places and commute to work. The resulting traffic congestion and urban sprawl has brought an increase in average journey times in large cities, and the decommissioning of older tram systems. Increases in air pollution and noise, and diminishing road safety, diminish residents' quality of life.

Examples of car access issues in underdeveloped countries include the paving of Mexican Federal Highway 1 through Baja California, completing the connection of Cabo San Lucas to California. In Madagascar, about 30% of the population does not have access to reliable all-weather roads. In China in 2003, 184 towns and 54,000 villages had no motor road (or roads at all).

Certain developments in retail are partially due to car use, such as supermarket growth, drive-thru fast food purchasing, and gasoline station grocery shopping as well.

Economic changes

Employment and consumption habits The development of the car has contributed to changes in employment distribution, shopping patterns, social interactions, manufacturing priorities and city planning; increasing use of cars has reduced the roles of walking, horses and railroads.

In addition to money for roadway construction, car use was also encouraged in many places through new zoning laws that required any new business to construct a certain amount of parking based on the size and type of facility. This policy succeeded in creating many free parking spaces, with business places further back from the road. The resulting less dense settlements were better suited to cars, and less well to carless living.

Retail parks attract revenue away from high streets and town centres. Many new shopping centers and suburbs did not install sidewalks, making pedestrian access dangerous. This had the effect of encouraging people to drive, even for short trips that might have been walkable, thus increasing and solidifying auto-dependency. Opportunities for employment, activities, and housing widened for users, and narrowed for the carless.

Economic growth

In countries with major car manufacturers, such as the United States or Germany, a certain degree of car dependency might be positive for the economy at a macroeconomic level, since it demands automobile production, therefore resulting also in job creation and tax revenues. These economic conditions were particularly valid during the 1920s when the number of automobiles, worldwide, was rapidly increasing, but also during the post–World War II economic expansion. Having various comparative advantages, countries specialize, exporting some products and importing others. Several auto-dependent countries, lacking an automobile industry and oil wells, must import vehicles and fuel, affecting their commercial balance. For example, the majority of European countries depend on imports of fossil fuels. Just few, such as Germany or France, manufacture enough cars to satisfy their country's demand for them. These factors affect the economic growth in the majority of European countries.

Employment in the automotive industry As of 2009 the U.S. motor vehicle manufacturing industry employed 880,000 workers, or approximately 6.5% of the U.S. manufacturing workforce.

Traffic

Cycling steadily became more important in Europe over the first half of the 20th century, but it dropped off dramatically in the United States between 1900 and 1910. Automobiles became the dominant means of transportation. Over the 1920s, bicycles gradually became considered children's toys, and by 1940 most bicycles in the US were made for children.

From the early 20th century until after WWII, the roadster constituted most adult bicycles sold in the UK and in many parts of the British Empire. For many years after the advent of the motorcycle and automobile, they remained a primary means of adult transport. Postwar In several countries - both high and low income - bicycles have retained or regained this position. In Denmark, cycling policies were adopted as a direct consequence of the 1973 oil crisis, whereas bike advocacy in the Netherlands started in earnest with a campaign against traffic deaths called "stop child murder". Today both countries have high modal shares of cycling while also having high car ownership rates.

Cultural changes Affordable automobiles are sometimes said to have changed the world.

Modal split Prior to the appearance of the automobile, the major modes of transportation within cities were horses, walking and (since the 19th century) streetcars. Horses require a large amount of care, and were therefore kept in public facilities that were usually far from residences. The wealthy could afford to keep horses for private use, hence the term "carriage trade" referred to elite patronage.Carriage trade The Free Dictionary Horse manure left on the streets also created a sanitation problem.Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Owl Books, 355 pages (1999)

Distance The motorcycle made regular medium-distance travel more convenient and affordable and after World War I the automobile too, especially in areas without railways. Because cars did not require rest, were faster than horse-drawn conveyances, and soon had a lower total cost of ownership, more people were routinely able to travel farther than in earlier times. The construction of highways in the 1950s continued this. Some experts suggest that many of these changes began during the earlier Golden age of the bicycle, from 1880 to 1915.Smith, Robert (1972). A Social History of the Bicycle, its Early Life and Times in America. American Heritage Press.

Changes to urban society

Beginning in the 1940s, most urban environments in the United States lost their streetcars, cable cars, and other light rail systems, to be replaced by diesel-run motor coaches or buses. Many of these have never returned, but some big cities replaced them with rapid transit.

Another change brought about by the car is that modern urban pedestrians must be more alert than their ancestors. In the past, a pedestrian had to worry about relatively slow-moving hazards such as streetcars and horses. With the proliferation of the car, a pedestrian has to anticipate automobiles traveling at high speeds that can cause death or serious injury. Previous traffic deaths were usually due to horses escaping control.

According to many social scientists, the loss of pedestrian-scale villages has also disconnected communities. Many people in developed countries have less contact with their neighbors and rarely walk unless they value walking.

Advent of suburban society Following World War II in the United States, government policies and regulations such as the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, low-cost mortgages through the G.I. Bill, and residential redlining combined with white flight to foster the creation of suburbs. Suburban affluence led to a baby boomer generation far removed from the hardships of their parents. Community standards of the past, driven by scarcity and the need to share public resources, gave way to new credos of self-exploration. As the economy of the 1950s and 1960s boomed, car sales grew steadily, from 6,000,000 units sold per year in the United States to 10,000,000. Married women entered the workforce and two-car households with driveways and garages became commonplace. In the 1970s, however, the comparative economic stagnation then experienced was accompanied by societal self-reflection on the changes the motor car brought. Critics of automotive society found little positive choice in the decision to move to the suburbs; the physical movement was looked upon as flight. The automotive industry was also under attack from bureaucratic fronts, and new emission and CAFE regulations began to hamper Big Three (automobile manufacturers) profit margins as the United States went into a recession.