never logged in Germany as many cars as in this year. 47.7 million of the total of 65.8 million registered vehicles are passenger Cars. The ADAC according to the length of the 2019 fraud in the us counted motorway traffic jams, 1.4 million kilometres. The concern, of traffic could soon collapse, and the recommendation that private people like to change the city in greater numbers on the wheel, form the core of a debate whose consequences remain manageable.

Kai Spanke

editor in the features section.

F. A. Z.

One is inclined to say, never to be sharper on the impact of road transport, discussed than it is today, and owes, so the obvious guess, of our knowledge. In fact, however, the Generation of baby boomers was fully in the picture. In 1972, the Club of Rome presented the report of the “limits to growth”, also appeared Jürgen Dahl’s Essay “the beginning of The end of the automobile”. The 2001 takes deceased author and Journalist, what are the health consequences of exhaust gases have, he muses about the road traffic regulations, which is the “motorist, the law of the Stronger and for the pedestrians, only a kind of wild exchange leaves”, and the context of Car production and prosperity: “the fact That the economy of the car production was dependent, because every Tenth of this industry is alive, is in truth no Argument for her to Flourish, but would have to be in the opposite of the serious occasion to push for a reduction.” It is dangerous if it is instructed to go out of the country on a branch of the economy.

Dahl often deals with problems that lead back on themselves. So, he stresses, a large part of the individual transport would be used to escape the effects of this type of traffic. Thereof, witness the popularity of recreational trips: “Everywhere, primarily with the help of cars inhospitable-made town in the dimensions gives birth, as it is inhospitable, ever-new motorists.” That noise and exhaust gases demand every year, hundreds of the Dead, is regarded as collateral damage of technological development. The countless opportunities, the rigors of transport to counter – sound-insulating Windows and filter plants up to of medication, for Dahl, a telltale Symptom. Ultimately, progress in creating the conditions which “give his further progression of the slip of the need”.

Political arguments and aesthetic concerns

The volume contains two further interventions Dahls: “a defence of mobility” and “defence against Plastic”, both from 1974. In them, the author demonstrates once again his Talent to rebut with elegant cultural criticism, certainties – without having to appear as a pessimistic Whiner. Until today, mobility is considered to be the epitome of freedom. The Dahl strange, because the movement alone makes a person not independent. The one who is not really self-sufficient, asks Dahl, the can dispose of his time freely? Immanuel Kant remained all his life in one place. This should bring nevertheless, no pity, because it was far less harsh, to remain in the eighteenth century in Königsberg, as in the twentieth century, Dusseldorf not to leave.