The Dangers of Automobility*
* Automobilists integrate their bodies with a Machine.
**Michigan rural**
**bicycle survey**
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The "good Driver" is one whose mind and reactions are driven by the automobile. Just as the darkness and quietude of a country night lulls us to sleep, the inhuman speed and crafted trajectory system of the highway demands lucid reaction aggressive response. The automobile promises increased "sensitivity and comfort" for the encarcerated yet what is received is constant danger. The response to this danger is then colored by the sheer speed needed to remain in relative safety._______The response is
_______universal.
_______In constant flight
_______the automobilist
_______reacts with instinct.
Once started- once the series of explosions lurch the auto forward, the shell begins to dictate. Trapped now within a preprogrammed, predetermined matrix of trajectories, the drivers are driven. Condensed into traffic in the urban sphere the flow becomes metronomic and synchronic. Starting and stopping. Each distance being covered not only with concrete, soot, and oil but by a daily invasion of automobiles. Traffic in a highway or inter city speedway pushes those trapped within the automaion to extremes. This fact is not even disputed. Its official name: road rage. It is described as a violent reaction taken by automobilists against their fellows. Both encarcerated in armor against the hot, abrasive street- where nothing can survive against the oncoming autos- these vectors of destruction.Fascination with
_______the missile and
_______the automobile
_______are parallel.
Both the missile and the automobile are the objects of mass destruction. Explosive power carried quickly to their target. This speed in fact is a major selling point for both, being slow would actually endanger the attacker/automobilist. The powerful engine, harnessing explosive power and mass mows down, crosses and destroys. The only effective defense of such objects, we have seen and experience is objects of larger mass and equal explosive power._______The road is a
_______guidance system
_______whose trajectories
_______all point
_______at a civilian
_______population.
Just as the department of defense points its nuclear and conventional arms at populations, the department of transportation aims automobiles and automobilists through neighborhoods. The victims of both are subject to sudden impact and explosive force. Again, result too is familiar, a controlled population in constant danger and denial of that danger._______Autonation:
_______the controlled
_______and the
_______controller.
These explosions, these violent deaths produce a public numb to the possibilities. The Threat of dismemberment, of blows to the head and spine, of bone crushing force produces a terrified public and an apocalyptic landscape. The conjured view of what our world after nuclear attack- resembles the parking lots of the malls, the libraries, the shops, and the government buildings. Toxic fumes, toxic pools, and danger of serious injury around every turn. The popularity of military style of automobiles- the all terra vehicles- completes the image. With a "commanding view of the road" they rove the landscape, in predetermined formations, in opposing directions, encircling the people left to face the attack."Safety is in Assault
simply because the new ballistic vehicles make flight useless; they go faster and further than the soldier, they catch up with him and pass him.""from now on, general safety can come only from the masses in their entirety reaching speed."
-P. Virilio