Cars and Their Enemies Summary In the July 1997 issue of Commentary, James Q. Wilson challenges the consensus among top academics regarding the automobile in his bold article, Cars and Their Enemies. Aimed at the general public, his article discredits many of the supposed negative aspects of the automobile raised by experts, demonstrates that the personal car is thriving and will continue to thrive because it accommodates individual preferences over other modes of transportation, as well as presenting solutions for the social costs of cars. Wilson points out that whatever is said and done to eliminate the social costs of the car, experts will not stop campaigning against it. Wilson begins his article with a hypothetical scenario in which the mass production of the automobile is proposed. raised today as a current issue. Within this imaginary scenario, he explains that many aggressive predictions and complaints would be made about the negative effects of automobiles on society, and that, due to such strong opposition, the personal car will likely not be created. Wilson returns to this scenario later in the article, explaining that people living in a car-free nation would be forced to have small homes, located in large, high-density cities where streets are congested with pedestrians, trucks and buses (Wilson 22). . He also insists that traveling to such a country would be difficult, and that if you did, the only places you could travel would be crowded areas that could support a nearby train stop (Wilson 22). Wilson insists that living in such a nation would be unpleasant, as it would have many serious problems, unlike the trivial ones used by anti-car critics to discourage car use now. One... middle of paper... sts as they continue to try in vain to get people out of their cars. To mitigate the social costs, Wilson offers a number of suggestions such as increasing gasoline taxes, but argues that this will never happen in a democratic nation like the United States, another concept critics need to understand (Wilson 22). He cites what he thinks are more realistic suggestions such as creating more bike lanes, banning cars from streets that can become pedestrian malls, and charging tolls on bridges entering the city (Wilson 22). She insists that although the social costs are reducing significantly as time passes, that won't stop critics from attacking her. Wilson concludes by explaining why the anti-car campaign will never end: "critics dislike everything the car represents and everything society builds to satisfy the needs of its occupants" (Wilson 22).