They give
some of us one particular kind of freedom: to move our bodies to distant places, without any physical contact with the landscape in between. To receive our warmed-over food in paper packages through a window, avoiding eye contact with the person who hands it to us, with no idea who made it. To live so far from where we work, shop, learn, visit family, get healed, exercise, recreate and worship that we can spend a quarter of our adult lives en route from one to another.
At the same time, we are tethered to gas stations, mechanics, car dealerships, bank loans, parking facilities, fuel bills, insurance payments, traffic laws and fines - and completely up shit creek if the transmission goes. As for the people who can't afford their own car, buses are merely an extended car, on which they can rent a small space for short time, so they're freed from walking, but tethered to the bus routes and schedules.
Since cities and highways are laid out to accommodate car traffic, everyone
not in a car is inconvenienced accordingly.
Older civilizations; cities and countrysides that were laid out
before the advent of automobiles, suffer unmanageable traffic congestion, gridlock and delays, which limits the freedom of all their residents.
2- Cars shorten time of transportation, but
From some places to some places. An ambulance needs to get to the hospital quickly.
But it can't, because the road is jammed up with trucks full of surplus clothing, overpackaged gizmos, sugar-water in plastic bottles and other instant garbage that never should be transported from anywhere to anywhere; indeed, never would have been made anywhere if they couldn't be transported someplace else.Hence the abandoned factories US-wide: there was no distant destination for their product.
Doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers, traffic grid controllers, hydro repair crews, etc. need to get to their clients in a hurry.
Of course, they wouldn't be needed half as much, without all the problems caused by cars.
3- Cars are the cause of many accidents and victims.
That's the least of it. They're also making people isolated, alienated, violent, crazy, physically sick and soon, unable to inhabit the planet*.
*It's a team effort: Autoculture shares that endeavour with religion, militarism and monetarism.