The ideology that accepts death, injury, pollution and sprawl caused by the car has been contrasted with the early-twentieth century Islamic terrorism. The latter, described under the term al-Qaeda, has led to a lower number of deaths but governments sprung to action launching two wars as well as spending billions in intelligence and security expenditure.

The former, which has been described as ‘al-Careda’, led to several order of magnitudes more deaths but no government really does anything significant and few people think about it. It is not a mainstream political issue, all the main political parties merely accept or actively promote al-Careda.

I am not sure who first used the term ‘al-Careda’, it is a pretty obvious verbal trick so probably lots of people have thought of it in parallel, Nick Currie’s long live journal article dates from 2004.

How they compare in numbers

In 2001, al-Qaeda organised the death of almost 3000 Americans on 9/11. However, al-Careda was over 12 times more successful, killing 37,862 Americans in 2001.

[That is only the people that immediately died. Al-Careda injured and maimed many times more than that and some of those prematurely died from these injuries and were not recorded in this number.]

Al-Careda is also consistent, managing this every single year. Between 2000 to 2009, al-Careda killed 371,104 Americans immediately, not including some of the maimed and injured who died a premature death.

In the 7th July 2005 London bombings, 52 people were killed by Islamic extremist terrorists following the ideas of al-Qaeda. In 2005, 3201 Brits were killed by al-Careda with 268,000 injured.

Al-Careda is also consistent in its UK terrorism too, causing 31,098 deaths in the decade 2000-2009 and 2,709,146 injured. Those injured from car deaths during the first decade of the 20th century would fill a city the size of Birmingham and central London combined.

During the decade, approximately 12 million people are recorded to have died across the world. World-wide, many deaths in poorer countries go unrecorded, so this number could be higher. Not exactly a like for like comparison, but to put this figure in perspective, this is roughly double the number of people who died in the Holocaust. Deaths are on the increase as car usage grows in the developing world. 50 million are injured each year.

Comparing the numbers is the obvious bit. What I want to do in future posts is look into how the ideology allows otherwise rational people to accept death, injury, pollution and sprawl caused by the car. I want to explore how the brainwashing process works. I want to know how humanity can move on from the al-Careda madness to a new sensible and safe situation.