Hey, drivers: This isn’t war

Re: “Denver is waging a war on cars and drivers,” Feb. 12 commentary There is no war on cars and drivers.

In a real war, people are injured and killed. In 2019, 71 people were killed in Denver in collisions with motor vehicles, mostly cars. Many more were injured.

Some might argue that, if anything, cars and drivers are the ones waging war — but I don’t. What’s actually going on is merely a reallocation of space (roads and sidewalks) and time (traffic signals and speed limits) more equitably among users who prefer different ways of getting around.

Cars are personalized and comfortable. They create an illusion of convenience. They are also expensive, polluting, dangerous and mostly reliant on a source of energy (oil) that drives international conflict. Yet they have been our favored mode of transportation for 100 years.

When any favored group sees resources that were prioritized for them allocated more equitably, they feel oppressed. That’s not a war, however. Saying it is merely illustrates how desperate the previously-favored group feels about defending its priority.

Reallocating space and time may make the car commute longer. The car commuter still gets to sit in a comfortable space, insulated from the weather that pedestrians and cyclists travel through and transit riders wait in, and from the physical effort non-drivers have to put in to get where they’re going.

Drivers need not declare an imaginary war. They can just leave earlier.

Jerry Tinianow, Denver Editor’s note: Tinianow was Denver’s Chief Sustainability Officer from 2012 to 2019.