Why Are Cars Important To Society

Pretest Essay

Cars have been a necessity for living ever since the first car was manufactured in 1908. Most people will use a car every day, whether it is to get to work at a prompt time or travel anywhere with ease. Car’s create a cheap and easy solution for traveling where you want to go when you want to go. The car needs to remain central in the lives of Americans because it creates the freedom, jobs, and economic support.

First of all, cars create freedom, a property American’s know the importance of, by offering the option to go to places quickly and easily. Before the car, the only way of travel was by a horse and buggy, or simply walking to your destination. Both ways were tiring and impractical, limiting the places you could

go and extending the amount of time it would take. If we were to replace the car from our lives with something such as biking, we would have the exact same problems before the making of the car. In the text “America’s Key to Freedom” by Carol Domblewski, it is stated “People could now live where they wanted. They didn’t have to live in a city to have a job there. “Citizens also have the freedom to take any job they desire, whether distant from or nearby their home with the privilege to own and operate a car.. In today’s society, if American’s removed the car as an option of commute, it would take away the freedom of choice and make life more stressful and difficult. Domblewski writes “The car also liberated many African Americans, who were able to leave the South… for better jobs and a higher standard of living.” Overall, the car gave a whole other aspect of freedom that advanced the way of living and if we were to abandon the car, our current way of living would disappear, creating utter pandemonium in people dependent of this way of transportation and freedom.
Consequently, the making of the car creates millions and millions of jobs for desperate American wanting to put food on the dinner table.

Domblewski highlights “Once cars began to be mass-produced, factories were built that put thousands of people on assembly lines.” Roads and highways also had to be constructed to provide cars with a stable path on which to run and are still being built. Along with roads, gas stations, motels and car washes created opportunities to work in one of the service providing jobs to people who drive car and the drivers themselves. Domblewski writes” … the automobile… creat(ed) whole new industries, new products, new ways of advertising and selling products, and millions of jobs,” proving not only does the assembly and selling of cars put unemployed American’s to work, it also helps other jobs and companies flourish, bringing a whole new prospective to manual labor and academic jobs. Although, as stated in “Running of the Road” by Grover Kingsley “The auto is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (a harmful substance to the environment),” it is important to remember that echo-friendly cars are a possible solution to this problem, and that with the removal of the car, millions of American’s would become jobless, unable to afford the necessities we take for granted every

day.
Along with adding more privileges of freedom and creating jobs, the car has been a major enforcer of economic growth and support that would not continue to develop with the removal of cars from the society. Domblewski argues “In 2012, for example, about one-third of the economic growth of the United States was related to automobiles.” Even though, in 2011, cars caused traffic congestion that totaled an estimated $121 billion dollars, as highlighted in “Facts Along the Road”, the economic advantages are typically more supported than the disadvantages when it comes to tallying our country’s economic worth. An entire three percent of America’s economic vale comes from automobiles alone, and without the car the economy would drop drastically. The automobile also helped America rise to the top of the economic charts each year. Additionally, we can deliver and carry goods to other countries quickly and for a lower price than before the reliability of the simple service of a car. If the car ceased to exist, our economic growth would suffer the price, and the bright light of our economy would sputter and dim greatly.
In summary, the statement made by Grover Kingsley, reading “… cars no longer free us,” is simply not true. With the advance of the car, America can live where they want with the freedom of a car, choose any job they want with the practicality of the car, and have options for entertainment with the ease of a car. To conclude, the freedom a car, the jobs a car provides, and economic support and growth a car creates would be diminished if we were to remove the car from our lives, proving the benefits of cars outweigh the restrictions and harm.