Drive (3 page)

In the meantime, MacDonald compensates by doing what he's done for more than a decade: making his living researching and talking about cars. In 2004, his company did a survey comparing Canadian and American attitudes on a variety of topics, including whether people agreed with the statement “A car says a lot about a person—it must reflect my personal style and image” or instead thought, “A car is just an appliance, something to get me from point A to B.” Turns out, 54 percent of Americans preferred “style and image,” while only 34 percent of Canadians did. On the other hand, 62 percent of Canadians and just 40 percent of Americans saw their cars as appliances. (This may explain the popularity of
the practical, but rarely stylish, hatchback north of the border.) “If Americans have a passionate love affair with the automobile,” concluded MacDonald, “Canadians have a mild crush.”

That the two peoples view cars slightly differently should come as no surprise to anyone who understands the fundamentally different cultural values of the two nations. Michael Adams, the president of Environics and the author of books such as
Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada, and the Myth of Converging Values
, believes that cars play an even greater symbolic role in America. In 2005, he wrote a piece for
Marketing
, a trade publication, arguing that for Americans, the car has always represented not only socioeconomic status but also mobility, independence and freedom. “Cars were to middle class suburbanites what horses were to cowboys: keys to movement and productivity and, if everything else went sour, tickets to a fresh start in another town,” he wrote. “When it comes to how we imagine ourselves, Canadians seem happier to admit that their cars really are just appliances that mostly travel in circles: away from home and back again. Americans are more attached to the ideal of the car as an extension of themselves: an expression of their individualism, and a means of heading off toward a new frontier should they so desire.”

THE INTENSITY OF THEIR PASSION
for their rides may differ, but both nations experienced the bulk of their population growth after the turn of the last century, so most North American urban centres are designed for cars, though that's proven to be not such a good thing. In addition, both have economies built on cars and trucks. In my home province of Ontario, one in six jobs is related to automobile manufacturing. And almost all of our jobs are dependent in one way or another on the ability for people and goods to move along roads.

Roads such as Highway 401. More than 815 kilometres long, it runs from just shy of the Detroit River all the way to the Quebec border—and always seems to be clogged. The section through
Toronto can be particularly infuriating: it's the busiest in North America, busier even than California's famed Santa Monica Freeway. Originally completed in 1956 as a northern bypass, the 401 wasn't a way to avoid the city for long. Since Toronto sits on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, southward expansion was impossible, and the expressway accelerated the northward spread of people and businesses. Decades of sprawling growth mean the 401 now takes commuters, truckers and other drivers right through the continent's fifth-largest city and fourth-largest conurbation.

On weekdays, this part of the highway regularly carries more than 420,000 cars—and half a million people. Compounding the congestion is the design of the road, which doesn't offer much in the way of what traffic engineers call lane continuity. Two lanes in each direction—with a capacity of 35,000 cars a day—seemed like more than enough when construction started, but by 1959, as many as 85,000 cars jammed the 401 daily. In 1963, the provincial government finally announced plans for the first expansion of the highway. Today, at its widest point, the road has eighteen lanes. Since drivers must contend with lanes that appear and disappear, transfers between the express and collector lanes, and frequent exit ramps, the congestion is exacerbated by a lot of merging and lane changing. “There's no doubt that the 401 violates one of the basic principles of simple is better,” observed Les Kelman, director of transportation systems for Toronto. “We're trying to squeeze capacity so much that it has introduced a degree of unpredictability, which is not necessarily good in a driving environment. Even for an experienced driver, it's a nightmare.”

That nightmare gets worse for the people involved in the average of twenty-five collisions a day on this thirty-six kilometres of highway. Most of these incidents are minor, but the ones that aren't can create real havoc. One of the worst in recent years occurred just after three o'clock in the morning on September 29, 2004. The fiery crash involving two tractor-trailers closed most of the highway's lanes until well past the time the morning rush
would normally have morphed into just heavy traffic. Nearly twelve hours later, police and clean-up crews had finally finished clearing the mess, meaning the crash wasn't just a huge inconvenience for commuters, but also a big hit to the economy. Although the 407, an electronic-toll highway that opened a little to the north in 1997, offers an alternative for those willing to pay the everincreasing charges to the private consortium that now owns it, the 401 remains the economic spine of the region, and more than $1.4 billion worth of goods move through Toronto on the old highway each day.

Fortunately, because I'd left the city from the south, I didn't join the 401 until west of Toronto. And then, just after London, I exited onto Highway 402 to Sarnia, which meant I also missed Carnage Alley. The London to Windsor stretch of the 401 has been the site of several gruesome crashes over the years, including an eighty-seven-car pile-up in thick fog on Labour Day in 1999. Eight people died and another forty-five suffered injuries.

The carnage on our roads and the economic significance of our freeways are far from the only elements of car culture that Canada and the United States share. Both are geographically big, with vast, wide-open spaces and gorgeous landscapes that lure people into their cars and out onto the roads. And both countries are home to car lovers. In a couple of weeks, I would meet several members of the Guthrie Flashbacks at an auto show in Depew, Oklahoma. One of them—retired attorney Dennis Doughty— told me about an internet forum called ChevyTalk, where enthusiasts from both countries hang out. “We don't always get along on politics,” he said dryly, “but on the old Chevys we seem to have common ground.”

And yet that ground may not be quite as common as Doughty thinks because car culture does change north of the forty-ninth parallel. While some Canadians may like to spread their car knowledge, lefty politics and other charms on the ChevyTalk site, their fellow Canucks are less likely than their American cousins to
be members of car clubs, to spend time fixing, restoring or otherwise tinkering with their vehicles, or to accessorize them. Rather than a hobby, in Canada a car is probably just a means of transportation or even a “necessary evil,” according to industry analyst and automotive consultant Dennis DesRosiers, whose research also suggests, “Canadians tend to buy vehicles to fill fundamental needs rather than desires, whereas Americans are more aspirational with their vehicle purchases.”

OBLIVIOUS CAR LOVERS ASIDE,
many North Americans watch the automobile with increasing alarm, a predicament that's eerily reminiscent of the one people faced when they travelled on four hoofs instead of four wheels. The horse wasn't convenient or efficient: most people had to go to a livery stable to arrange transportation, and even for the few who had their own, spontaneous trips weren't practical, so no one said, “Let's go down to the five-and-dime. I'll bring the horse and buggy around!” But traffic was still a growing problem in cities, and the congestion was exacerbated by the absence of rules of the road. Horses also created health problems: they relieved themselves frequently, and rotting carcasses often stayed on streets for days before someone bothered to clean up the mess. People needed an alternative. The bicycle spurred social change—including acting as a catalyst in the women's movement because it provided previously undreamed-of mobility and even encouraged less-restrictive clothing—as well as creating the need for better roads, but bikes weren't practical for everybody or for long distances.

Automobiles first appeared in Germany in the 1880s, but the development soon moved to France, where more people could afford to buy them. Initially a luxury, or even a toy, for the wealthy, the car quickly became a necessity in the United States. By the early 1900s, even before the automobile was really practical, Americans embraced it with an optimism that seems laughable today. Instead of urine, manure and dead horses attracting flies
and spreading disease, American streets would be clean, quiet and uncluttered. The car never delivered on that promise, of course, but it changed just about everything. Society-altering inventions—including air travel, antibiotics and the birth control pill—seemed common in the twentieth century, but the automobile may have been the most profound of all.

The auto and oil sectors were soon giant engines of the U.S. economy, while many other industries, including restaurants and hotels, changed and grew. Aside from making shopping easier, cars fostered consumerism because automakers introduced the concept of credit. Since the banks wouldn't lend money to people to buy cars, the manufacturers offered financing, and by 1925, threequarters of the cars sold in the United States had been purchased on instalment plans. Although Henry Ford hated the idea of people buying anything they couldn't afford to pay for with cash, his competitors left him with no choice and he caved in 1928.

Ford may have lost that battle, but he won on another front. He refused to contribute to projects such as the Lincoln Highway, the first link between New York and San Francisco, because he believed that if the private sector built roads, the people never would. So the government stepped in. Today, the widespread adoption of just in time delivery means private-sector manufacturers have essentially turned public highways into warehouses, increasing congestion, harming the environment and damaging the infrastructure, which taxpayers then have to pay to fix. And once politicians started building roads, the welfare state wasn't far behind.

Automobiles also helped to attract immigrants. Many Europeans loved their cramped cities, but most of the people who came to America wanted land, and the car helped to gratify that thirst for green, open spaces. Women also benefited. Almost from the beginning of the era, carmakers created advertising aimed at them, and several technological advancements, including power steering and automatic transmissions, were overtly promoted as enablers for female drivers. And once she was armed with an
automobile, a woman was less likely to accept staying barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Homes were also changing. In the 1800s, garages were unnecessary. By the 1920s, more and more houses had detached garages tucked away in the back, usually on a lane. In the 1950s, the typical suburban home featured a big driveway leading to an attached garage at the front. And by 2001, 18 percent of American houses had a three-car garage, up from 11 percent in 1992. Viewed from the street, many appear to devote more space to cars than to humans. More dramatically, the automobile dictated the form of the modern city by drawing us from dense downtowns to the sprawling suburbs, trading efficiency for a feeling of space, safety and freedom.

How we spent our leisure time also changed with our increased mobility. There's an old joke that asks why we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, but parkways were originally scenic routes designed for recreational trips to the country (though, ironically, they soon helped to stimulate the suburban development that destroyed much of the countryside). And though the concept may now seem bizarre, for generations the Sunday drive was a popular pastime: people simply climbed into a car and went for a slow, leisurely trip-to-nowhere drive. My father took me on a few, but the practice fell out of favour when oppressive traffic took all the relaxation out of it. (The Sunday driver—someone who is pokey, distracted or even incompetent behind the wheel—is still out there, though.) National Park visits rose dramatically after the sites opened to automobile traffic in 1908 and the driving holiday and the road trip became common activities, especially after the Second World War. And as cruising the main drag became increasingly popular, so did teenage rebellion.

Tailgate parties—gatherings outside sporting events to barbecue some food, enjoy a few drinks and socialize with other fans—proved cars could be fun even when parked. Of course, that wasn't news to teenagers. Indeed, the car loosened our morals as courting practices changed because the back seat promised to be
much more fun than sitting on the front porch under the watchful eye of parents. For people past that stage in their relationship, meeting for trysts became much easier, which led to an increase in adultery and divorce. In the 1950s, drive-in movie theatres were known as passion pits—for self-evident reasons. And just about everyone has a sex-in-a-car story. (Even as a non-driving teenager, I always made sure I invited a girl with a car to the high-school dance.) As MacDonald put it, “Cars shape our lives from conception in the back seat to being hauled out in the hearse.”

THE AMERICAN LOVE AFFAIR
with the automobile really became serious in the 1920s. Early cars were expensive and, like bug-plagued early personal computers, not that user-friendly. Before Charles Kettering invented the electric self-starter that first appeared on the 1912 Cadillac, the only way to get a car going was with a hand crank, which was not just hard work but also dangerous as more than a few drivers broke thumbs, wrists and even arms trying to start their automobiles. The new starters were great for Caddy owners, but it took at least a decade before the technology trickled down to lowlier models. And for all its popularity, Henry Ford's Model T was open to the elements, and that meant it wasn't practical except in temperate weather. In 1920, about 90 percent of cars were open, but several manufacturers began producing affordable alternatives, and by 1930, about 90 percent of cars were closed. The growth in auto sales was striking: the United States had 8.1 million registered cars in 1920 and 24 million by October 1929, when the stock market crashed.