automobile structure.docVIP

Structure of the automobile (M1) Few inventions in modern times have had as much impact on human life and on the global environment as the automobile. Automobiles and trucks have had a strong influence on the history, economy, and social life of much of the world. Entire societies, especially those of the industrialized countries, have been restructured around the power of rapid, long-distance movement that the automobile confers on individuals and around the flexible distribution patterns made possible by trucks. Automobiles have given great freedom of movement to their owners, but encourage sprawl (i.e., straggling, low-density urban development). Sprawl degrades landscapes and produces traffic congestion that tends to immobilize the automobiles that make sprawl itself possible. Furthermore, the dependence on petroleum fuel of automobiles and trucks, and thus of the economies based on these machines, imposes strong patterns on global politics, moving industrial societies such as the United States (which consumes approximately 25% of the worlds oil production) to be deeply concerned with the power struggles of the Persian Gulf, where approximately 70% of the worlds oil reserves are located. The automobile is also a significant health hazard, both directly and indirectly. According to the United Nations, over a million people (both vehicle occupants and pedestrians) die every year on the worlds roads; the United States alone loses over 40,000 lives annually to car crashes. Meanwhile, automobile exhausts are the largest single source of air pollution (in the United States). Air pollution from the manufacture and operation of automobiles contributes importantly to crop damage, acid rain, destruction of the ozone layer, lung disease, and early death by a variety of health problems. Sixteen percent of the worlds annual greenhouse-gas production comes from automobiles; greenhouse gasses contribute to global climate change, which may disrupt food production and flood coas