Synopsis Of The Film 'Taken For A Ride'

“Taken for a ride” is a film we watched in class that focuses on diverse communities and structural inequality. This film shows our world, and how we became so dominantly focused on the automobile in our society today. This film documents the efforts of general motors to derail the mass transit system in America. Fast forward to the 20th century and now just about every family owns more than 2 cars. General motors efforts to derail the mass transit system is still having a huge impact on our world today. We now live in a world dominated by the automobile. In 1922 the origin of the automobile began. Just 1 in 10 Americans owned an automobile. The lower and middle class dominated public transportation. A streetcar was the primary source of transportation during this time. General Motors, an automobile-manufacturing juggernaut, owned both Yellow Coach and Grey Hound, two major bus companies. By the 1940’s it only took general motors about 90 days to take streetcars off the road and replace them with busses. The bus transportation system quickly began to be very popular. Although the massive popularity increase, the busses where poorly designed and sometimes did not function properly. This created a high demand for the automobile.

Public transportation around the United States lacks efficiency and often is very time consuming to use. It is unfair that the citizens often affected by the new built highways are inner city dwellers and often don’t even use the highways. Majority of these inner-city dwellers are minorities of a lower class. Instead higher-class citizens that own automobiles use these highways. These inner city citizens rely on public transportation to get around the city and it is unfair that they have to deal with lack of efficiency everyday because the higher-class citizens need roads to drive