Mr. Wright says "Smog Warning"

[nfotxn]

Am I alone in thinking that drive-thru fast food is probably the most insane concept to proliferate in north america? Honestly, let's sit in our own cars running motors waiting for food. There's nothing postively insane about that. Infact I think we should be running our own combustion engines at all times of the day, ya know, just in case.

Car culture is so selfish.

Comments

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, it's silly. Whatever happened to carhop service?

Los Angeles tried to ban drive-thrus a few years ago... and even though it's the (second) smoggiest city in the US (Houston is now first), it didn't succeed.

One curious thing about smog: certain tree species emit more hydrocarbons as an idling car. In Southern California, the carrotwood tree (popular in parking lots in the 1970's and 80's) was banned from commercial landscapes because of this!

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Interesting about the hydrocarbons although my basic understanding of chemistry says to me that there are vast amounts of different hydrocarbon configurations. I have a feeling that those occuring in nature are a little less harmful than those created from burning petrolium.

I don't know about actually banning the drive-in.. it's far from possible because it's so culturally engrained. Also the more I think about it starting and stopping an engine is probably just as bad as idling.

[jbear70.livejournal.com]

When I was learning to drive, we were taught that if you are going to be idling for more than a minute, it is more efficient to turn the car off than to keep it idling. I believe though that this was based on the efficient use of gasoline rather than a reduction in tail-pipe emissions.

[sunflower1969.livejournal.com]

It may be selfish, but the only thing worse than going through a drive thru at McDonalds is having to go *inside* and be waited on by the bored, obnoxious, can't make eye contact with you employees inside a McDonalds. At least you can blast your car stereo after minimal face time with the employees.

(Yes, I know working fast food sucks, and I know that I shouldn't eat McDonalds - it happens to be the (de facto) only restaurant within a half mile of my house)

[mrx88.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you, although I think it's more of an American culture problem instead of a car culture problem like you mentioned. In Europe, they are striving to find better ways of powering cars, such as the fuel cell and hybrid gasoline-electric solutions and the idea is widely accepted. In America, Ford (with their 'Think' model) and General Motors (with their 'EV1' model) had programs on the go to actually build and sell those types of cars. But now, due to lack of support and acceptance from the American society and governments, they canceled those programs. For them, they saw this as a major lost of revenue instead of seeing it as an investment for the future. The slowing economy did have a factor to play in this as well.

IMO, public transportation is one effective solution that's already in place. Only problem, it's only available to bigger centers. Where I live, we barely have a taxi service on the go, let alone public transportation. As a direct result, everybody I know owns a car and uses it even though they just need to go down the street. Sad reality.

All that to say, once the American society wakes up, things might get better. Already, Honda (Insight) and Toyota (Prius) are having success with some of their hybrid models. Let's hope we can see a trend going on.

[jbear70.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that it is a societal problem. Public transportation is the key but your comment regarding availability isn't necessarily dependant on large urban centers. Detroit is a large urban center with an underfunded and neglected public transit system. Part of the problem is that this is the seat of the Big Three (or two depending on how you look at it) hence everyone should be owning private cars -- it's now patriotic you know. The other problem is that society needs to understand that they need to work together to solve the problems affecting it. Increasingly, we no longer can afford a cabin in the woods (i.e. suburbia) and think that the consequences of overconsumption won't catch up with us.

[mrx88.livejournal.com]

How true! Underfunded/neglected public transits never crossed my mind when I was writing the comment. That's another face to the problem. In regards to what I wrote earlier, I was actually explaining things from my point of view (and how I understand it) which is somewhat restricted due to the fact that I live away from big urban centers. Nonetheless, it puts things in perspective. :)