Thread by @jonworth

Today I did what’s normal every day for 40% or so of Berliners. But not for me. I drove a car.

This is it: a Seat Leon from @MILESmobility

🧵

I needed to collect a piece of furniture too large for the bike trailer, 2.5km away on the other side of Neukölln

Car sharing is ace for a task like that

I walked there, bought the furniture, got the car, loaded it in, drove home, dropped the car

Going there you live the city. You feel it. The chilly wind. The birds singing in the trees. The smell of the fish stand at the Herrfurthplatz market. The noise of car tyres on cobblestones.

You can’t not be aware of the city around you.

And then you get in the car.

And you’re cocooned from that. It’s very quiet. You can barely hear the engine, let alone anything from the street outside.

It’s an automatic so it just goes. You find you’re doing 40 in a 30 zone and you haven’t even touched the accelerator.

There aren’t even physical controls. Drive and reverse are buttons. Park as well.

And so I return home in my bubble, sheltered from everything of the world.

I park the car. Have to wait to cross the road, as a maniac is speeding down the 30km/h street at 60. I gesticulate at him because of the speed, the noise, the whoosh of air.

But he, in his bubble, is oblivious to all of that too, as I had been moments before.

Therein lies the problem. Not only have we constructed our cities around the car, but our cars are such that they insulate their occupants so completely from the city that the disconnect grows.

Only policies to rid cities of cars can do anything about this I suppose. It’s a hard one to crack.

And once in a while it’s handy to see the cocooned life of the other side.

#autokorrektur #a100stoppen

/ends