Access and Convenience
Worldwide the automobile has allowed easier access to remote places. However, average journey times to regularly visited places have increased in large cities, especially in Latin America, as a result of widespread automobile adoption. This is due to traffic congestion and the increased distances between home and work brought about by urban sprawl.
Examples of automobile access issues in underdeveloped countries are:
- Paving of Mexican Federal Highway 1 through Baja California, completing the connection of Cabo San Lucas to California, and convenient access to the outside world for villagers along the route. (occurred in the 1950s)
- In Madagascar, approximately 30 percent of the population does not have access to reliable all weather roads.
- In China, 184 towns and 54,000 villages have no motor road (or roads at all)
- The origin of HIV explosion has been hypothesized by CDC researchers to derive in part from more intensive social interactions afforded by new road networks in Central Africa allowing more frequent travel from villagers to cities and higher density development of many African cities in the period 1950 to 1980.
Certain developments in retail are partially due to automobile use:
- Drive-thru fast food purchasing
- Gasoline station grocery shopping
Read more about this topic: Effects Of The Automobile On Societies
Famous quotes containing the words access and/or convenience:
“Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a country.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)