Car Sick

Press Release

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For Immediate Release
October 13, 2006

Car Sick
Solutions for our Car-addicted Culture
By Lynn Sloman

Contact: Jon-Mikel Gates, (802)295-6300, ext. 111, jgates@chelseagreen.com

Drive Less, Do More, Live Better

“Cars cause environmental destruction, provoke stress and tear the heart out of communities. Car Sick provides a page-turning account of how we got into this mess and more importantly charts an attractive way out. If you’ve got a car, read this book. It will change your views, and could change your life.” —Tony Juniper, Friends of the Earth

The twenty-first century is gridlocked. Mass motorization has ruptured community ties, bankrupted a nation of family businesses, and bred a nation of obese children and adults. Politicians stumble from one transportation crisis to the next.

Lynn Sloman proposes a novel way forward—not through the big-bang civil engineering projects, but by getting people to think about their choices, rather than reaching for their car keys.

The average American adult spends nearly a quarter of her waking life behind the wheel – up to 1,000 hours per year, according to one study – far more time than is spent exercising, reading or socializing. This doesn’t include the time spent working to pay for the car, working on the car, and the countless hours spent dealing with insurance, licensing, financing and maintenance. More and more, it seems like it’s not so much we who drive the cars as it is the cars that drive us.

By making simple changes in the way we think about and use cars, we can reclaim that time. There’s no need to resort to giant road projects – which, Sloman argues, only make things worse. If we change what we understand is the purpose of a road or a car, we can save ourselves a lot of time, money and stress, and save the environment in the bargain. The solutions Sloman offers to our car-crisis are real and have already been implemented by people, townships and cities across the globe. More useful than admonishing us to ride our bikes (though that’s always good advice) and more practical than proposing a radical reorganization of our infrastructure, Car Sick introduces us to effective, practical strategies for reducing our dependence on automobiles.

She shows how de-motorization works: in place of traffic, it offers neighborly streets and vibrant city centers. Copenhagen’s decision to create pedestrian streets in the city center has made it an outdoor theatre, filled with celebration and spectacle even in winter. From small towns like Langenlois in Austria, to the centre of London, de-motorization is transforming urban surroundings.

We do not need to get rid of cars altogether. What we do need is to change the way we think about travel. Car Sick is a passionate, well-argued case for moving away from a car-centered to a people-centered society.

Lynn Sloman was Assistant Director of the environmental lobbying group Transport 2000 for ten years until 2002. She now runs a sustainable transport consultancy, Transport for Quality of Life, helping the government, local councils and voluntary groups in Great Britain find ways to cut traffic. She is an advisor to the Board of Transport for London, a board member of the Commission for Integrated Transport, and a board member of Cycling England. She lives in rural mid-Wales—without a car.

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Book available October 2006 | Paperback | $20 | 1-903998-76-x | 6 x 9 | 194 pages

Find out more at www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/carsick.com