This text was first posted on The Urbanist, and is reposted right here with permission.
By Anna Zivarts
Anna Zivarts revealed When Driving Isn’t an Choice: Steering Away from Automobile Dependency with Island Press in Might 2024. The e-book outlines her expertise as a low-vision nondriver and shines a light-weight on the irritating, harmful, and typically lethal conditions involuntary nondrivers face day by day. This can be a letter she wrote in response to her mom’s response to the e-book.
Mother,
I’m fearful your response to this e-book has been to mud off your bike and begin to bike all over the place in your exurban neighborhood. I do know your complete id is wrapped up in being robust. That you simply biked throughout the nation twice once you have been in your twenties. That you simply climbed mountains with gargantuan hundreds instructing wayward youngsters how one can survive within the wild. That you simply have been in labor with me for 36 hours, decided to have a house beginning.
I like that about you. And I like how that has rubbed off on me. Too many youngsters with disabilities are coddled and guarded — dad and mom too afraid that our variations or our “limitations” imply that it’s unsafe for us to do issues. You taught me to trip bikes although I couldn’t see every little thing, and taught me to climb mountains although I tripped rather a lot. You trusted that I may try this and due to that I trusted myself.
I fear now that you simply’re deciphering the message of my e-book as a problem: are you able to get round with out driving? Are you able to robust it out within the rain, up the hill, on the shoulder with vehicles zipping by?
I do know you are able to do it. And perhaps some days you wish to, it could possibly really feel good to push ourselves mentally and bodily and do one thing we checked out earlier than and thought: ‘that’s gonna be robust.’
However that’s not the purpose. What I attempted to say with this e-book, with the individuals whose tales I shared, is that you simply shouldn’t should. Nobody ought to should.
Not having the ability to bike up that hill within the rain in the dead of night shouldn’t be perceived as a sign of ethical failure. Nor ought to having the ability to do it’s taken as an indication of valor, of greatness. You’ve been fortunate to have a physique that may do these items. Not everybody does.
Accessing our communities shouldn’t require sure our bodies.
I do know you don’t like to speak about your getting old physique, however you too will sometime attain a spot the place biking, and certain even driving, isn’t an choice.
As I’ve turned 40 and the aches and accidents take for much longer to heal, I’m beginning to perceive that my skill to make use of my physique to cowl distances that I can’t drive is diminishing. Although I can’t see nicely sufficient to drive, I’ve had plenty of mobility freedom since you taught me to bike and confirmed me it may very well be a path to independence.
For you, for me, for everybody else in our communities who has locations to go, individuals to fulfill, issues to do, errands to run, mobility shouldn’t require a automotive. Nor ought to it require bodily power or toughness. We want communities the place it’s attainable to stroll or roll a brief distance to get a espresso or a roll of bathroom paper. Or for individuals who wish to reside in rural areas, the place there’s a every day bus into city.
This isn’t a pipedream. We will take steps proper now to cut back automotive dependency in our communities, to spend money on transit and to make it safer and extra comfy to stroll, roll, or bike. And we should.
Between individuals like me who can’t drive, individuals too younger to drive, individuals who can’t afford to drive, and people who find themselves getting old out of driving, we make up 30% of the inhabitants. It’s time our communities began working for us. And by making the modifications that make it attainable for us to get round, we will enhance the well being and wellbeing of our communities by tackling one of many largest sources of carbon emissions, along with lowering automotive crashes and air pollution.
In fact I hope you continue to trip your bike. If extra individuals, particularly individuals in decision-making roles, take the time to trip transit, to stroll, bike or roll, they’ll perceive higher what wants to alter and why. However I actually hope — along with using your bike — you present up on the subsequent metropolis council assembly to combat for sidewalks and transit funding. Or perhaps even a direct bus connection to Seattle so I can come go to you (and you may go to me, when you cease driving).
Love, Anna
This text was reposted with permission from Douglas Trumm, Writer of The Urbanist.
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