"The main notion of Ivan Illich is the concept of counterproductivity: when institutions of modern industrial impede their purported aims. For example, Ivan Illich calculated that, in America in the 70's, if you add the time spent to work to earn the money to buy a car, the time spent in the car (including traffic jam), the time spent in the health care industry because of a car crash, the time spent in the oil industry to fuel cars ...etc., and you divide that by the number of kilometres traveled per year, you obtain the following calculation : 1600 hours per year per American divided by 10000 km per year per person equals 6 km per hour. So the real speed of a car would be about 3.7 miles per hour."
With cyclist getting bumped all around me this summer(and even one pedestrian who was advised to wear a helmet) I'd be curious what the numbers look like in todays terms. Anyone know? Should time spent in health care due to the sedentary lifestyle car driving promotes also be factored in?