Slow Murder

I am being slowly murdered. I know that I am, the police know that I am and the Government knows that I am, and no one is doing a goddamned thing about it. The thing is I’m not the only one; any person who is the owner of at least one lung is likewise being slowly murdered.

I don’t want to sound like a crybaby; I think that this growing ‘victim culture‘ is unhealthy for the individual and for the society. Having said that I still feel totally helpless to do anything to avoid my murderer’s attentions. Every time I breathe I take in a little bit more of the poison. I have no choice in this. Actually I do; I can choose not to breathe, but this is not a viable option as the end result will be the same.

It’s may be clear by now what I’m talking about. The effects of vehicle emissions are known, and have been known for many years. There are statistics aplenty describing the number of deaths each year directly attributable to airborne pollutants, the primary contributor of which is the beloved automobile. Every time someone turns on the engine of a car they inject a little bit more poison into the atmosphere, and into the respiratory system of every individual who chooses to continue breathing.

If it was the result of the actions of an individual or company we would lock them up and throw away the key, but because it is the result of the actions of so many people it is therefore somehow ok. We can see the victims, but because of the sheer number of murderers our legal system is unable to cope. How can you prosecute an entire society? The Government is not really responsible, although they certainly could be doing more to prevent it; it is the responsibility of every single driver of a motor vehicle. So whom do you prosecute? This question is clearly too hard for even the greatest legal minds in the country, either that or they are not prepared to even ask it. So rather than do anything concrete to fix the problem, it is allowed to continue.

The average driver is well aware of the damage vehicle emissions do to health. There will probably be some that claim ignorance of this, but I am pretty sure that if they were invited to put their mouth over the exhaust pipe of a running car they would refuse. And they certainly wouldn’t do it for half an hour or more at a time, which is the average time it takes me to ride to work every day.

Using cars has become such a prevalent part of the way we live that we find it impossible to consider living without them, whatever the cost may be. Even knowing the risk to which we are putting ourselves, not to mention everyone else, makes little difference. Hundreds of thousands of cars are still used every day in Queensland alone and tonnes of toxic gases and particles are spewed all over the place. It sits in the air and we breathe it in. The heavier particles fall to Earth and get on our skin and clothes and into the food we eat. But do we stop using our cars? Of course not. Is there a massive public outcry like we had when the health risks associated with asbestos became known? I don’t hear it, and I certainly don’t see anyone spending millions of dollars to rectify the problem, as was the case with asbestos.

What is the government doing in this case? How are the people charged with the responsibility of defending the defenceless fulfilling their duties? These are the people who on the one hand are collecting the data of how many people have been poisoned to death each year, calculating the monetary cost to society of said fatalities and the general ill health of people (as if that were the most important aspect of the problem) and spouting the benefits of public transport/cycling/walking/just-getting-out-of-cars to a largely unheeding public, and on the other hand refuse to make any attempt to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases. In fact they insist that they ‘need’ to increase them, and with the introduction of the GST are reducing the cost of cars and motoring in general, and are one of the biggest users of motorised transport in the country if not the biggest. This is hardly a strategy for reducing car use and stopping the mass murder of mostly innocent bystanders. Is it only me that sees the hypocrisy here?

And what about the people who pulled out all the stops when some contaminated peanut butter was accidentally released into the public a few years back? The product was pulled from the shelves of supermarkets, investigation committees were sent up, legal proceedings were initiated and all because a product sold in a fairly small part of the market gave a few people a nasty case of the squirts. The same thing happened with a certain smallgoods producer in Victoria at about the same time, and again when some crazed individual merely threatened to poison Arnott’s biscuits. When a certain person shot 30-odd people in Port Arthur, our Mr. Howard swung into action and enacted new laws and bought everyone’s guns with taxpayer's money. Well, some of them at least. The news broadcasts were filled with sensational reports of these events, and there was a general feeling of panic in the community, and when something was seen to be done to solve the problem there was a general chorus of ‘hurrah’ and everyone rested easy in their drivers seats again. When it comes to the carnage caused my motor-vehicles there is a curious silence, and all we do see is a proliferation of more and more cars and the construction of more and more roads.

The average driver thinks nothing of these things. I’m not sure of the rationale that enables them to get in a car every day and force-feed me a diet of carbon monoxide and so on. It’s like we are hypnotised by the advertiser's rhetoric. The thrill of speed or the ease of mobility seduces us, and we are so attached to it that we will not see the true cost, and violently object to anyone who points it out. If we do consider our polluting ways we convince ourselves that the effects are somehow cancelled out by diluting it in the atmosphere. It is assumed that the Earth is cunning enough to take all these poisonous substances and turn it into things like clean air and healthy food and pure water without any direct effort on our part.

I hate to break up the party (actually, no I don’t) but this is clearly absurd. Even if the Earth could do such things, it only has a limited capacity to do so. The ever increasing number of cars, particularly in ‘emerging’ countries like Vietnam and China, place a burden on the planet’s recycling system that will eventually strain it to breaking point, if it hasn’t happened already. The deaths from being poisoned just by breathing are increasing steadily, eventually someone is going to have to take responsibility, and I don’t mean the sort of responsibility that the ambulance chasers are after. The responsibility falls on all of us to see the actual broad-ranging effects of our actions and resolve to not perform those acts that are not beneficial. Given the threat that cars create with their polluting ways, not to mention their heavy-metallic-object-moving-at-great-velocity ways, and the ease with which they can be replaced by less polluting and less physically imposing forms of transport, it would seem that the use of motor vehicles at current levels is not of benefit. Not even to those driving them.

Even if the government did care enough to ban all fuel burning forms of transport (unlikely, to say the least) it still comes down to individuals stepping out of their cars and getting about in slightly less murderous ways, and maybe even getting rid of their cars altogether. It comes down to people deciding to build communities where the required average journey is small enough to not even think about driving, although considering the average Australian’s reluctance to exert themselves to walk any further than the driveway, this too is unlikely. It comes down to everyone realising that every time they drive somewhere in their car, someone dies directly because of it, although in a culture of ‘look out for number one’ I find it hard to imagine this happening without a significant shift in our way of thinking.

So where does that leave me? Stuck between the hypocritical and the ignorant I can see no solution. I feel helpless to defend myself against the murderous intent of motorists. I don’t see why I should stop riding my bike; I am entitled to make use public space and public air like anyone else. It really won’t make that much difference to how much excrement I breathe in anyway, and if I am forced into driving all the time like the rest of them I am only contributing to the problem. Obviously, I’m not about to try and avoid it by not breathing, nor do I see hiding away in a sealed bubble as a viable option.

My only choice leaves me where I am now, being slowly murdered by poisoning. If it persists eventually it’ll kill me. My death will not be mourned by those directly responsible for it, nor will it force a change in the law so that it never happens to anyone else. As tragic as it seems that’s just the way it is. All I can do keep riding and get on with the remainder of my life as best I can.

It’s a good thing my love of life and my love of riding are sufficient to keep me on the bike despite the obvious damage it’s doing. I only hope that my example is enough to get a few more people out turning the pedals. Maybe that’s the only reasonable thing I can do.