Car crash: a look in the rearview mirror; Once it looked as if the automobile's dominance of transportation might be checked, but it's still king of the road.

• Author: Renner, Michael

In 1988, when I wrote about the future of automobiles in the premier issue of World Watch, there were no Hummers on the road and SUVs had not yet reached their prime. It would be another decade before Toyota unveiled its revolutionary Prius hybrid. The fact that both vie for consumers' pocketbooks today suggests that in the last 20 years we have come a long way and yet remain stuck in reverse at the same time. The Hummer, a knock-off of the heavy-duty U.S. military vehicle that was a centerpiece of "Desert Storm" in 1991, is not so much a car as a statement of defiance in the face of peak oil worries and growing environmental consciousness. As the anti-Hummer, the Prius promises drivers mobility without wrecking the planet. But it, too, is far more than a mere means of transportation: the Leonardo DiCaprios of the world have made the Prius de rigueur in certain circles.

The larger issue is not so much what divides Hummer partisans from Prius lovers as what unites them: the undiminished allure of motor vehicles of all stripes. The automobile--status symbol and technical fetish that it is--appears to be an unstoppable force despite its hugely destructive impact. And as much as the private car holds out the promise of personal freedom to those revving its engine, its ubiquity also signals a pervasive dearth of transportation alternatives.

For providing the automobile with the infrastructure it demands--everything from roads and highways, tunnels, bridges, and parking garages to gas stations and dealers' lots--means that there is less physical space and less money available for other means of transportation. And because the automobile ultimately creates distance more than it overcomes it, public transit, walking, and biking become less of an option. This is particularly true in the United States, where heavy reliance on automobiles is the result of a peculiar blend of preference and necessity.

In that inaugural issue of World Watch in January 1988, I pointed to factors that might cool humanity's passion for the automobile: the rollercoaster of oil prices in the 1970s and 1980s; market saturation in the strongholds of North America, Western Europe, and Japan; the debt crisis that brought Latin America's auto expansion to a near halt. In sharp contrast to three decades of inexorable growth following World War II, car production had by then entered a period of severe up- and downswings. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development...