Saving Ourselves from Big Car: Saving Ourselves from Big Car

by David Obst

Cars are killing people and making the planet uninhabitable. Crashes take the lives of more than a million people around the world each year. Air pollution linked to motor vehicles contributes to even more untimely deaths. Highways and unsafe streets have devastated cities, yet traffic congestion still swallows up countless hours. And carbon emissions from transportation are a key driver of climate change, which now threatens to make the world unlivable. Why do we still worship at the altar of the car? How can we find alternatives that are healthier for the planet and ourselves?

Streetwise exposes how “Big Car”—the complex of companies in the automobile, oil, insurance, media, and concrete industries that promote and entrench car dependence—has pursued profit at the expense of the common good. David Obst explores how Big Car gained almost immeasurable influence over our lives, weighing the benefits and the costs of reliance on private automobiles. He details how industry covered up the harms of lead additives, fought against seatbelts, and continues to fund climate-change denialism. Obst considers the future of mobility, surveying how cities—from Taipei to Tempe, Copenhagen to Chicago—are experimenting with forms of transportation that offer alternatives to the dominance of cars. Provocative and comprehensive, Streetwise is a powerful wake-up call for us to change how we use cars before it’s too late.

Genres: Politics

296 pages, Hardcover

Published September 16, 2025

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is, on the face of it, right up my street; and I did enjoy reading it. This is not the first book I've read on the subject, that started with Carmageddon (Daniel Knowles), but what this title does is trace a history of 'Big Car' to explain how we got here. Where we have been lately and, to some extent where we still are, is a bleak, bleak picture that results in health problems for humans as well as for the biosphere on which we depend. Shocking details about road deaths (approaching an average of one a day in Los Angeles alone) and lead contamination in ice cores going back centuries jump off the pages. The book ends, however, with a smorgasbord of morsels of hope from around the world: municipalities and even shopping centuries transforming themselves or being designed to wean us off oil and onto our feet, public transport and pedal power, connecting us with each other and our surroundings.

Clearly well-researched this book moves between fact and journalistic-style opinion writing in a slightly disorientating way: some sections feel quite academic with multiple endnote citations, others are more fast-flowing and informally written (but which leave the reader wondering if some of the claims are those of the writer or are based on research findings). Another minor gripe would be that as a result of the way the book is organised, there is some repetition of material in a way that is more than just referencing forwards or backwards. Nonetheless, I would still recommend this book for anyone interested in learning how we have ended up with such a dangerous and polluting system of private transportation and wants to learn about some of the hopeful indications for the future.

I received an advance copy of the book from NetGalley free, and am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Wherefore Art Thou · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a good job of charting the dangers of the car industrial complex over time. It’s a little quippy, a little basic in its conclusions but the right pieces are all there and I think the case is well-made that cars and the car industry has done people a great harm. I’m not a huge fan of automotive history so some of this book wasn’t as far up my alley but I see how much of it was necessary to present the case Obst was making.

However, the biggest problem I have with this book is the title. “Saving Ourselves…” it’s an actionable phrase! How must we save ourselves? That’s what I most wanted to know! I am already anti-car and anti-car industry, but as a society, departing from our car-centric infrastructure seems impossible. I was waiting for us to learn how it could be done! Unfortunately that portion of the book was relegated to a few case studies of cities in the back who have, outside of the Tempe village example, have mostly done some of the basics: establishing bike lanes and trains in the city. That’s not good enough for me and is not good enough to move away from cars. I need more here!

[Mary Gersemalina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Obst clearly connects the dots from the innovation of the car to multiple industries’ dependence on its manufacture and continuation while also showing the ways the car became integrated into our culture and its evolution and persistence as a status symbol. To undo our reliance on the car would be a major undertaking and Obst describes the multiple entities dedicated to making sure that does not happen. Obst details the high human and environmental costs we will continue to pay for our reliance on this mode of transport.

There is some information included in the book that I found interesting but not germane to furthering Obst’s central thesis and I ended up skimming these. In addition, Obst’s tone can come across snarky at times and his arguments are strong enough that I think they would have benefitted from being put on the page in a more straight-ahead fashion.

Too big to fail and similar to big pharma in ways that Obst sews together for us, this is a recommended read for those interested in exploring how we came to live in the era of what Obst calls Big Car and why it's likely to continue despite serious and harmful consequences.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy.