As I noted briefly last week, I've been avidly following my friend Krista's new blog (My Transportation Diary). I've learned a lot from Krista about the "problem of car-dependency in our culture", the central theme of her blog, and admire how she has been living out life in the East Bay without owning a car, while making the best use of her bicycle and public transit options. I myself am fortunate to live less than 2 miles from the Berkeley campus where I work, enabling me to bike most days. Still, I own a car but have been wondering whether to sell it (to free myself first and foremost from the financial burden of car-ownership.) Krista is someone I look to to help me figure out whether I really need my car; I hope that she continues to report on her experiences because a lot of us do need help.

So when I saw "The Thrill Of The SUV", a segment on 60 Minutes last Sunday, I thought of Krista and a specific question I have for her. The most intriguing part of the show was an interview with Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, the most famous of the "car shrinks" who help car manufacturers to sell cars to us by tapping into the deepest recesses of our subconscious minds. Whether you believe Rapaille, you have to admit that he's a good salesman for his ideas. Here are some quotes from the transcript:

“Why do you buy a car that doesn't even make 10 miles per gallon, doesn't fit into your garage? Do you really need that? And you don't need that intellectually,” he says. “But at the reptilian level, what I call the reptilian level, the reptilian brain, the deepest part of you, the gut level if you want, you feel like you need that.”

“We are at war. You don't go to war in a Pinto or in a little Volkswagen. You want a tank, you want, you know, and I told the people there in Detroit, you know, SUVs - you put a machine gun on the top, you're going to sell them better, you know”

“Why? Taller. Stronger. I mean, the elephant, the bigger you are, the more chance you have to survive. Now, we know that the higher you are, more chance you have to roll over. And we know that SUVs have a higher rate of accident for rollover than other cars. I mean a Porsche is a lot less chance to roll over than an SUV. That's at the cortex, which means people know it but they don't refer to it because there's something stronger which is the reptilian- the bigger, the tallest, and more chance to survive.”

If Rapaille is right, then what can be done to reduce our dependency on cars, let alone big gas-guzzling vehicles? Is stopping Americans from driving SUVs like trying to stop them from eating, drinking, and having sex? (Not quite, of course) What part of the reptilian brain does public transit tap into? Is the appeal to public transit always a "higher brain" appeal or one to the more visceral side?