Running on empty: too many drivers and not enough passengers--could this be the explanation for sky-high gas prices and endless miles of asphalt?

"ON THE ROAD OF LIFE," THE POPULAR Volkswagen ad reads, "there are passengers and there are drivers. Drivers wanted." This simple but snappy line brought the Beetle back from the brink of extinction because, given the choice, who wouldn't rather be a driver? Drivers are in charge. They get the keys and the wheel and choose the direction. Passengers just sit there. And what 12-year-old ever dreamed of being a race car passenger?

Maybe being a passenger was glamorous when Agatha Christie penned Murder on the Orient Express or Peter, Paul, and Mary sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane," but in today's unfriendly skies airline passengers wait in interminable lines to check luggage, get through security, and board their flight--only to discover that other passengers have already filled the overhead bins, grabbed both armrests, and popped back their seats.

Still, if the skies feel crowded with too many passengers, our regular commute "on the road of life" has become unbearable because we have too many drivers. Contrary to the Volkswagen ad, more passengers are definitely wanted.

Stand on any corner during morning rush hour, and nine out of 10 of the "passenger vehicles" rolling past you will have no passengers. Follow those SOVs (Single Occupant Vehicle) out onto the highway and you'll find that it's a surplus of drivers clogging up the arterials from D.C. to L.A. and creating the congestion, delays, and smog that makes our daily commute so tedious. When it comes to traffic, pollution, and our gross national oil bill, we're in a jam because we ride alone.

To provide cars, trucks, and SUVs for all these solo drivers, America has built a fleet of over 220 million motor vehicles--about three cars for every four people in the country--and paved more than 4 million miles of roads. And every time we add five new cars to that fleet, we lay another football field of asphalt.

Lester Brown of the Worldwatch and Earth Policy Institutes warns that if China's 1.3 billion people catch the U.S. fever to become drivers--as Chinese consumers are catching our taste for steel, beef, and oil--the most populated nation on earth will need a fleet of over 1.1 billion vehicles, and China will need to pave over 72 million acres of soil, roughly the same area used to raise that country's rice crop. And all those Chinese drivers will need 99 million barrels of oil a day to fill their gas tanks, 15 million barrels more than current global production.

OF COURSE, LIFE ON THE ROAD MIGHT NOT be completely catastrophic for the environment if all the drivers were riding solo in VW Beetles (or gas-electric two-seaters getting 55 miles to the gallon). But American drivers like to see themselves behind the wheel of a gas-guzzling SUV, truck, or not-so-minivan, one of those macho monsters that are always carrying tons of passengers and cargo in TV ads, but that never seem to have either when you see them in traffic. And with gas prices climbing over $3 a gallon this summer, you should be able to hear the steady "ka-ching" of the cash register as all those solitary drivers go rolling by.

But if too many drivers are bad for traffic, the environment, and our wallets--who is it good for? Maybe the VW ad should read "Drivers wanted--by the auto industry and oil companies, and people who don't think a lot about the planet." Millions of new drivers each year need millions of new (or pre-owned) cars, and every one of those cars burns about 750 gallons of gas each year. If most of those cars have no passengers, drivers will need to get directions from onboard satellite systems, since they can't ask the person sitting in front of the glove box to take out a map, and since all the male drivers will be afraid to pull over and ask for directions. And with tens of millions of solitary drivers joining the long daily commute, there will be a growing demand for cell phones to reach out and touch all those folks who used to be our passengers and to speed dial 911 to report all the accidents caused by D.W.P. (driving while phoning).

FIFTY YEARS AGO ROSA PARKS BECAME FAMOUS for not giving up her passenger seat on a bus. A few years later black and white "freedom riders" refused to let other people tell them they could not ride together on buses. Our current troubles are different, but maybe we need to resist the move to get everybody off the bus and into SUVs. Maybe we need protest songs praising the beleaguered and long forgotten passenger, the folks who ride buses, bikes, trains, and subways, the brave souls who walk, carpool, and ride share. Maybe we need a national campaign that says, "Passengers wanted."

We want passengers so we can build fewer cars, roads, and parking lots; so we can save on our household, national, and global gas bills; so we can reduce traffic, commuting time, smog, and global warming; so we don't have to pave over paradise or rice paddies; so we have something more than asphalt to leave our children and grandchildren; so these same young people don't have to go to war to feed an SUV; and so we have somebody to chat with when going through a tunnel or crossing Montana. Or maybe we want passengers because, as God said in Genesis, "It is not good for humans to be alone."

The VW ad paints drivers as action figures and passengers as couch potatoes. But on a planet with too many cars and drivers, and too much pollution and pavement, the revolutionary choice is to become a passenger. In German Volkswagen means "the people's transport." Maybe it's time we rode the road of life with other people.

McCormick's quick takes

ADMIT ONE

Several movies to fuel reflection about our love affair with motor vehicles:

Cars (Pixar, 2006)

Oil on Ice (Lightyear Video, 2004)

The Trip to Bountiful (Island Pictures, 1985)

By PATRICK McCORMICK, professor of Christian ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.