The ethics of transportation choices

I’ve written a couple of times on the consequences our transportation choices have on people far away from us. In this Streetfilms interview, ethicist Randy Cohen brings it home to the local level.

Cohen tells us that ethics concerns itself with the effects of our actions on other people. Very few people think of the impact we make when we make a decision (or, more often, no intentional decision) on our mode of transportation. Cohen discusses the issues surrounding individual freedoms versus the public costs in the video interview. Watch it here.

2 Comments

  1. I thought a lot of it would simply be too far a reach for lots of folks – kinda like slavery… it's just the done thing. How can it be wrong? It's our culture? But the bit towards the end about the invisible city that could be, which posited that it's not the novelty of a blizzard that renders people more joyful and communicative, but simply the removal of the cages between them, was really interesting. *Could* we be that happy all the time? Why not? It's prob'ly all about endorphins…

  2. I thought a lot of it would simply be too far a reach for lots of folks – kinda like slavery… it's just the done thing. How can it be wrong? It's our culture? But the bit towards the end about the invisible city that could be, which posited that it's not the novelty of a blizzard that renders people more joyful and communicative, but simply the removal of the cages between them, was really interesting. *Could* we be that happy all the time? Why not? It's prob'ly all about endorphins…

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