People use cars to get to work. You use them to get to the grocery store, to do your shopping, to visit your friends and family. When they’re such an integral part of your everyday life, it can be hard to imagine life without cars. In fact, many cities are designed with vehicles in mind instead of people, which creates a cycle that’s hard to break free from.
However, car-centric cities aren’t doing us or our planet any favors. Between urban sprawl (which we covered in a previous blog), traffic hazards, and pollution, our reliance on vehicles is killing us.
Hazards of Driving
Did you know traffic crashes kill 1.25 million people every year, and disable millions more? Fast, high volume traffic is a hazard to bikers, pedestrians, and other drivers. While these hazards are the most obvious, there is a far more sinister hazard of your reliance on vehicles: driving for more than two hours a day contributes to a sedentary lifestyle and can be hazardous to your health.
Rush Hour Pollution
If you work a regular shift at your workplace, chances are you’re traveling during rush hour to get to and from work. All those cars on the road at the same time, moving at a crawl, emit fumes into the air. Where do those fumes go? Unfortunately for rush hour drivers, that pollution goes right back into the breathing air inside vehicles; in some cases, the particulate matter can be two times higher inside cars than along roadways. So not only is your commute harming the environment by releasing pollutants into the air, but it’s also harming your health and the health of other drivers.
Noise Pollution
Honking horns and sirens are common sounds on the roads, and they never stop. Many cities still have traffic well into the night, and this noise pollution can reach past drivers and into people’s homes and businesses as well. Unwanted environmental noise can actually increase the risk for heart disease, stress and even depression.
It’s time to start building cities for people instead of vehicles. Our health and the health of our planet depend on it.
CREED LA fights to ensure that developers pay fair wages to all the hard working construction professionals throughout the industry while simultaneously providing them with quality health care, continued training, and trustworthy retirement plans. To learn more about how our non-profit organization supports those building a better, greener world for us all, contact CREED LA online or at (877) 810-7473.