Documentary ‘Bikes vs Cars’ Takes Global Reliance on Automobiles to Task
A new award-winning documentary makes the case that the world would be a better place if most people ditched their cars—and its filmmakers are out to prove that with data derived from a companion smartphone app.
Focusing primarily on cycling advocates in car-centric Los Angeles and São Paulo, Brazil, Bikes vs Cars looks at how the automobile has changed our communities, and not necessarily for the better. The film also examines infamous mayor Rob Ford’s rise to power in Toronto, where he rode an outcry over a non-existent “war on cars” to the mayor’s office and immediately began removing bike lanes.
Director Fredrik Gertten doesn’t believe drivers are the enemy, however. His scorn is directed at the corporations and lobbyists who have created an unsustainable reliance on automobiles.
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“It’s a matter of city planning: Bikes represent a city planning with a human scale where small business thrive,” Gertten said in a press release. “[But automobile] lobby-driven city planning have over the years made people car dependent. Motorists are victims of this effect and they pay with their time in the endless gridlocks.
“If all cities adopted the model of Copenhagen, where 40 percent commute within the city on bikes, it would be a radical change for the world, something you can measure in health, pollution, oil usage. … The car, oil, and construction industries are in the center of our economic system. They are the ones who don’t want change … even if the planet needs instant action.”
In true David-and-Goliath fashion, change is up to individuals who take action in their communities. In Los Angeles, that’s Dan Koeppel, who fights for bike lanes in the country’s most car-centric city. In São Paulo, it’s Aline Cavalcante, who “tries to focus on the positive aspects of being a cyclist in a city where one bicyclist is killed every four days,” according to the documentary’s press materials. (This statistic was reported by the Office of the Mayor of São Paolo in 2007.) In Toronto, it’s the group of bicycle advocates dubbed the Urban Repair Squad, who restore the city’s bike lanes with spray paint at night.
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Since its limited release, Bikes vs Cars has received positive reviews from critics and won the Grand Prize for Best International Documentary at Cinemambiente Environmental Film Festival in October.
To prove their point about how effective bikes can be at helping slow climate change, the filmmakers collaborated on the Bike Data Project smartphone app (bikedataproject.com), which allows users to track their bike commuting and calculate the amount of oil and CO2 emissions saved as a result. The data is in the process of being collected, and will be shared with city planners, transportation experts, and bicycle advocates across the world.
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The documentary is currently being screened throughout the US, and should be released December 15 on Vimeo. Theater locations and information on how you can set up your own screening can be found at bikesvscarsfilm.com.
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