EXTRA: Cars as a Virus with Hermann Knoflacher

The War on Cars

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Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of a person walking around in a large, wearable wooden frame meant to illustrate the space taken up by one person in a private automobile. That’s the gehzeug — or walkmobile — and it was invented by the Austrian civil engineer and professor Hermann Knoflacher.

Professor Knoflacher, 84, is the head of the Institute of Transportation at the Vienna University of Technology. Long before the current global pandemic, he compared cars to a virus. Rather than searching for vaccines and other ways to fight this particular threat, humanity has actively helped the spread of cars, much to the detriment of the built environment, human health and safety, and even our future on this planet. It’s a provocative analogy, but Knoflacher makes a compelling case.

SHOW NOTES:

The Car Is Like A Virus, Says Urban Planner But This Is One Pandemic That Politicians Can Prevent (Carlton Reid, Forbes)

Excellent Uber Ad Distills the Problem With Uber in Crowded Cities (Angie Schmitt, Streetsblog)

"Driving is worse than an addiction" (In German: Deutschlandfunk Kultur)

"The driver is absolutely anti-social" (In German: Manager Magazin)

"Vienna has been my patient for decades" (In German: Kurier)

Virus Auto (Hermn