In all dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies, there is a common scenario: cars in ruins and empty, weed-invaded streets, a world of silence and motionless; a future that, apparently, we are doomed to live in, at least as far as cars are concerned. With 1.42 billion cars on the roads around the world, the day is not far off when we get stuck in a monumental traffic jam with no way out.

But let’s not be so pessimistic and leave aside catastrophes and misfortunes to just focus on visualizing a hypothetical world without cars.

The benefits would be

• We would have an almost clean air (air pollution kills 7 million people each year and 2 million more live in areas where contamination levels are above the limit set by the World Health Organization)
• Less noise pollution (80% of urban noise is attributed to motor vehicles) 
• Less fossil fuel consumption (fossil fuels represent 80% of current global primary energy demand)
• We would recover the space today occupied by an infinite network of roads and highways, huge parking lots, car dealerships, car washes, scrapyards, car graveyards, gas stations and workshops; (to travel the 32 million roads and highways in the world, at a speed of 100/km/h, it would take 36 years nonstop)
• Obesity would disappear since we would have to walk (sedentary lifestyle is considered the main cause of obesity increasing rates in the United States, the country with the second largest obese population in the world, right after Mexico).
• Stress levels would drop considerably (driving involves risk to life, it is an activity under permanent pressure, surrounded always by uncomfortable environment and tense situations that are repeated frequently, both for the driver and the pedestrian). 
• Respiratory diseases would not be the second leading cause of death in the world anymore (every year, four million people die prematurely from chronic respiratory diseases).
• There would be no deaths due to car collisions or pedestrian accidents (the average number of deaths due to traffic accidents is 1.35 million worldwide). 
• We would have more money available by not having to spend on vehicle expenses (the average cost of purchasing, insuring, parking and maintaining a car in the US is about $11,400 per year, according to AAA).
• The environmental impact of discarded cars and their parts, such as tires, whose chemical composition is highly harmful to the environment, would be reduced.  

What would happen if we didn’t have cars?

In a hypothetical world without cars, human beings would have to rethink their life patterns; the concept of time and space in terms of daily routine would change significantly as we depend too much on motorized mobility since our life, work, leisure time and the world´s economy revolve around motor vehicles; by having to move using other means of transportation, obviously not as fast as cars, we would have time limitations; everything would slow down and we would practically go back in time, despite having a very valuable tool such as telecommunications technology, so advanced nowadays, which allows us to bridge distances. In short, changes would be social, cultural, economic, and environmental; life quality would improve in terms of health and well-being, although the economy would suffer a violent recoil.

However, and returning to reality now, it is not necessary to be so radical; it would be enough to moderate the use of vehicles and promote mass transportation, bicycles, skates, and other means of locomotion.  In this regard, we are on the right track: campaigns and interesting proposals are being promoted worldwide, such as BreatheLife, which mobilizes cities and individuals to take action on air pollution, the Car-Free day, already institutionalized in many countries around the world, the pedestrianization of large areas in densely populated cities, the post-pandemic modality of home office and car-sharing, among other initiatives.  A new philosophy is gaining momentum, led by green movements, environmentalists, academics, and professionals that aim for the recovery of the citizen´s supremacy over the vehicle. Car-sellers and pro-auto users are the real challenge, those who sell us the image of the automobile as a symbol of progress, independence and freedom.  The powerful automotive industry fights the relatively recently acquired environmental awareness with promises of more eco-friendly new technologies; politicians, in turn, offer a magical solution to the problems of traffic jams: more roads. Who will have the last word? Time will tell; let’s just hope it won’t be the one in the dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies.

“In order to keep balance, we need to hold the interior and the exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together”

                                                                John O´Donohue