Chapter 1 Light at the End of the Tunnel 1

Chapter 2 The Road to Freedom 11

Chapter 3 Time and Money 23

Chapter 4 The Great Love Affair 37

Chapter 5 Health and Happiness 49

Chapter 6 Who’s in the Driving Seat? 67

Chapter 7 Electrifying Change: Techno-futurist Visions I 81

Chapter 8 Cyber Capitalism: Techno-futurist Visions II 93

Chapter 9 Paving Paradise 107

Chapter 10 Taking the Con out of Convenience 121

Chapter 11 The Car in the City 133

Chapter 12 A Prosperous Society 149

Chapter 13 Imagine: Roadmap for Change 159

Chapter 14 New Forms of Freedom 179

Appendix A Crib Sheet of Solutions 185

Appendix B The True Cost 203

Appendix C Timeline of the Car Industry 209

Appendix D Human Versus Cargo: Similarities and Differences 213

Appendix E List of Interviews 215

Appendix F Recommended Further Reading 217

Notes 219

Acknowledgments 273

About the Authors 275

Index 277

Praise for ROADKILL

“Bold, urgent, and utterly necessary. A must-read!”
—CARLOS MORENO, Author of The 15-Minute City, Associate Professor at the Paris IAE–Panthéon Sorbonne University, Scientific Director of the ETI Chair

“I love this book. A beautiful mix of philosophy, science, public health, and activism. A blueprint for a better world.”
—DR. CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN, Physician, Television Presenter, and Author of Ultra-Processed People

“Beautifully engineered, high speed, elegant, fully customised demolition of our self-destructive and often irrational love affair with the car.”
—LAURIE TAYLOR, Sociologist and Host of BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed programme

“This book makes the compelling case for a mindset shift about car dependency and the myths we’ve been sold about freedom. If reading it doesn’t change your mind, you just don’t want it to change.”
—BRENT TODERIAN, City Planner, Global Advisor on Better Cities, and former Chief Planner for Vancouver, Canada

“Original, powerful, and persuasive.”
—LORD NICHOLAS STERN, Professor at the London School of Economics, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Author of The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

“The book we need now. Essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of our cities.”
—PROFESSOR RICHARD FLORIDA, Author of The Rise of the Creative Class

“Eye-opening and engaging, this book will change the way you see every road, parking lot, and traffic jam.”
—KONGJIAN YU, Dean and Professor at Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, “Sponge City” inventor, and Founder of Turenscape

“Bold, urgent, and utterly necessary. A must-read! A powerful wake-up call to anyone who thinks greener cars will solve our crisis. Roadkilll dares us to imagine a world beyond the car—not just a cleaner one, but a fairer, freer one. Henrietta L. Moore and Arthur Kay don’t just critique the status quo—they map the road to fundamental transformation”
—Professor Carlos Moreno, Author of The 15-Minute City, Associate Professor at the Paris IAE – Panthéon Sorbonne University, Scientific Director ETI Chair

"Long gone are the days when the automobile expanded possibility and choice. Now, thanks to its ever-increasing demands for space, speed, and time, the car has reshaped our landscape and lifestyles around its own needs. It is an instrument of freedom that has enslaved us. Many books have skirted the edges of this tragedy, like blind men groping at an elephant; Roadkill may be the first to expose the entire beast, in the flesh, in the round, so that none may mistake its enormity."
—Jeff Speck, city planner and author of Walkable City 

“Eye-opening and engaging, Roadkill reveals why our love affair with cars is toxic—and how we can break free. Packed with startling facts and human stories, this book will change the way you see every road, parking lot, and traffic jam.”
—Professor Kongjian Yu, Dean and Professor at Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and "Sponge City" Inventor; Author; Founder of Turenscape

“For too long, the debate on how we use cars has been warped by extremes on both sides: those who perceive cars as the ultimate paragon of freedom and those who condemn anyone who wishes to drive in one as selfish and bad. This important and enjoyable book moves the debate forward by asking the simple question: when do cars increase freedom? And when do they diminish it? In doing so the authors map out a wiser route to happier futures and better cities. Anyone interested in the future of our neighborhoods should read it.”
—Nicholas Boys Smith, MBE, Founder and Chair, Create Streets

“A sustainable future requires radical change. That in turn means strong investment in different ways of doing things and changing our behavior. The result will be a much more attractive path of growth and development, as well as a future. This splendid book makes the point very powerfully through something close to our everyday lives, the car. Original, powerful, and persuasive.” -
—Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Author of The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

 “‘Vrroom Vroom. This is a beautifully engineered, high speed, elegant, fully customized, demolition, of our self-destructive and often irrational love affair with the car’.”
—Laurie Taylor, Sociologist and host of Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed Program

“This beautifully written book illuminates our collective social life by treating the automobile as a window into the complexities of convenience, sustainability, planning and freedom today. It also offers a sophisticated menu of solutions to the problems produced by our automotive fetish.”
—Dr. Arjun Appadurai, Anthropologist, globalization theorist, and author of The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective

“This fascinating, inspiring and important book elegantly unpacks the illusion of freedom we have been conditioned to associate with cars, despite their well-rehearsed harms. “In the authoritative hands of Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay, Roadkill takes us on the ultimate road trip to see how fairness and freedom are undermined by our fatal attraction to cars. Critically, they show us how freedom and fairness are being reclaimed in towns and cities around the world so that cars no longer dominate our landscapes and choice of travel, breathing life back into our communities, bodies and planet.”
—Professor Dame Theresa Marteau, Director of the Health and Behavior Unit at Cambridge University

“Humans and cars - it’s sold as a love story, but this exposes the crime scene hiding in plain sight: car dependency is killing our cities, our climate, and our choices. Roadkill is a manifesto to reclaim our streets, our health, and our collective future, inviting us to imagine a world that’s fairer, freer, and far more human.”
—Hirra Khan Adeogun, Co-director of Possible and the Car Free Megacities Program

“Cars are the most successful product ever made – they are also a crucible for all the challenges of modern living. In this fascinating book Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay take us on a rich journey through philosophy and history to examine why we choose to love our cars and what bigger freedoms and pleasures – from good housing to a corner bakery - this love precludes. Enjoyable and thought provoking this book raises wider questions about what ideas get adopted and how, and whether we can re-imagine the policy making process from the ground up.”
—Hilary Cottam OBE, Author of Radical Help: How We Can Remake the Relationships Between Us and Revolutionise the Welfare State

"Provocative, enlightening, and deeply relevant, Roadkill is essential reading for policymakers, urban designers, environmental advocates, and anyone seeking to understand—and transform—the systems driving the climate crisis and inequality."
—David de Jong, Author of Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties

"Roadkill forces us to confront the profound ways car dependency shapes our lives, and offers a way out should we so choose to."
—Hayden Clarkin, Transportation Engineer and Planner a.k.a. “@TheTransitGuy"

“Roadkill is refreshingly open about the costs of freedom that cars provide, how different people are benefitted and harmed, and ultimately, raises big moral questions facing transport in the 21st century.”
—Dr. Pete Dyson, The Bicycle Mayor of Bath, Author of Transport for Humans

“I love this book. A beautiful mix of philosophy, science, public health and activism. A blueprint for a better world.”
—‘Dr. Chris’ Van Tulleken,  Physician and Television Presenter, author of Ultra-Processed People

“Our cities badly need to change to be better for people, and our minds badly need to change about cars if we really want better cities. This book makes the compelling case for a mindset shift about car dependency and the myths we’ve been sold about freedom. It pushes the right buttons with readable, persuasive evidence rather than lazy ideology, and it shares better visions that would actually work. If reading it doesn’t change your mind, you just don’t want it to change.”
—Brent Toderian, City Planner, Global Advisor on Better Cities, and former Chief Planner for Vancouver, Canada

“This timely book by Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay reminds us that cars and motoring are not a fundamental and necessary part of the human condition, but rather a recent choice which turns out have more negative side effects, unintended consequences, and downsides, that anyone could have foreseen when the transition to the internal combustion engine was ignited. Traffic deaths, road rage, air pollution, congestion, global warming, obesity, lost productivity, segregation, respiratory diseases, blighted locations, and noise nuisance are just some of the unwanted consequences of our addiction to motoring. People have rights. Cars don’t. This book offers us the chance to reassess the evidence, and switch course, from the risks and dangers of roadkill, to the manifold co-benefits of street life."
—Professor Greg Clark CBE, Urbanist and host of The DNA of Cities podcast

“Our high-octane road movie will end badly. Roadkill plots better routes for all life on Earth.”
—Professor John Elkington, Ambassador from the Future, the “Godfather of Sustainability,” co-founder of Environmental Data Services (ENDS), SustainAbility and Volans, and Author of Green Swans and Tickling Sharks

“Roadkill is the book we need now. It tears into the wreckage of our car-dependent culture and lays out a bold, clear-eyed vision for a better way to live and move. Essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of our cities.”
—Professor Richard Florida, Author of The Rise of the Creative Class

“Kay and Moore’s book Roadkill is a huge eye-opener and a must read for policy-makers, practitioners and citizens alike who care about freedom, inequality, health, climate, livable cities and the sustainability of the planet. They brilliantly and convincingly articulate the central role that the car-industrial complex has played in bringing us to a crucial tipping point in the planet's history. You’ll never look at your car again in quite the same way after you’ve read this truly engaging book.”
—Professor Geoffrey West, Theoretical Physicist and Author of Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies

In Roadkill: Unveiling the True Cost of Our Toxic Relationship with Cars, Professor Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay explore the philosophical consequences of car culture, as well as the practical, day-to-day impacts it has on our money, our taxes, our neighborhoods, our planet, our health, and our happiness.

The authors explain how and why the car has been marketed as a symbol of freedom. They present a persuasive argument that the opposite is in fact true. They suggest, alongside convincing evidence, that the car has limited the flourishing of our cities and restricted our choices. Moore and Kay also demonstrate a new way of thinking that promises to multiply our choices, improve our cities, and expand our freedoms.

Roadkill offers jaw-dropping, real-world examples of the human and monetary costs imposed by cars, including the fact that they have killed somewhere between 60 and 80 million people around the world since their invention. It provides well-founded philosophical arguments for the position that car-centric cities restrict the freedoms of drivers and non-drivers alike. The authors provide various ideas and approaches for urban designers, transport planners, policymakers, and mayors, and engage citizens to improve life in the city.

You’ll examine insightful critiques of the myths surrounding electric and autonomous cars and learn why these technologies are not the panaceas they are made out to be. Finally, you’ll discover how to reframe your relationship with the car, recognizing how they can be useful machines when used thoughtfully. Not the default way to get around, rather invited intentionally and integrated carefully into our lives.