Our knowledge of health and how to stay healthy is ever evolving. From Florence Nightingale reforming hospital sanitation to Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin, human nature seeks to preserve our own kind. More recently, science has seen developments in health wearables, which includes Bluetooth enabled inhalers to track and control patients suffering from asthma. There have even been advancements in 3-D printing for implants and joints that can be used during surgery.
It is a wonder how car ownership and usage remains fundamental to modern society. A consequence of using current day cars is air pollution. They release harmful substances into our environment. This air pollution accounts for 29% of all deaths from lung cancer as well as 24% of all deaths from strokes.
It is not only outside of the car that we can see negative effects but inside the consequences are staggering. Where once our ancestors would have to walk or cycle, this has been replaced by a car. Today, households with no access to cars use walking as their method of transport 53% of the time. For those with access to a car, this drops to only 23%.
As a result of using personal cars as our main form of transport, activity levels within the UK have plummeted. Currently only 47% of children are meeting their physical activity needs. This has resulted in 20% of all children in the UK being classified as obese. The long term effects can be seen in adults today where only 33% of men and 40% of women are a healthy weight.
The act of driving also effects our health. With more road usage than ever before, it is also then little wonder that roads are congested. This leads many to feel stressed and drained whilst driving. While safety in cars has been ever evolving, the number of car incidents remains at a worryingly high level. Those killed or seriously injured from a road casualty in the UK are almost 30,000 annually. Of this, 44% are individuals inside the car.
Driving assumes that the users make rational decisions. However, humans exhibit highly irrational behaviour. Being late for work, fear missing your restaurant reservation or even singing to music while driving will affect the way in which drivers process and react to congested roads. This will not change while driving is the primary method of transport in the UK.
Annually, of all the trips made by households in the UK, 2% were cycling and 27% were walking. However, in 2020 changes have been pledged by the UK government. A total of £2 billion will be spent to provide better facilities for these methods of transport. Perhaps coronavirus has given many households an opportunity to reassess their day to day activities. Will the act of moving from A to B make us focus on the journey rather than the destination? Can we start to consider driving as a luxury rather than a necessity? Will we start to see our own health come before the efficiency of travelling?
Charlotte Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment