Car worship is killing the once-great US railroad. Is ours in danger, too?

Even by his own standards of incoherence, George W Bush pulled a cracker when he declared Americans to be ‘addicted to oil’ and thus managed to be wrong twice in three words. They are not addicted – there is no compulsion involved – they are obsessed. And not with the gloopy gallon itself, but with the motor car that it propels.

The distinction matters, pointing as it does to the truth of Bush: in seeking ‘alternative’ fuels, he seeks only new ways to feed the beast; he hasn’t the slightest intention, now or ever, of actually slaying it. The almost constitutionally enshrined American love affair with its wheels, so insatiable that the car population now equals that of the human adult – one per person and right up there with inalienable rights – is once again safely, powerfully ratified.

Observer