A home insurance policy offers a discount to AAA members. The discount is the same amount as the cost of membership. I so rarely use a car or motorcycle that I would not benefit significantly from a roadside assistence plan. I cycle. But there are other discounts for AAA membership, like restaurant discounts. So my knee-jerk thought was: this is a no-brainer… I’m getting some benefits for free, in effect, so it just makes sense to get the membership.
Then I dug into AAA a bit more. The wiki shows beneficial and harmful things AAA has done. From the wiki, these points stand out to me:
AAA blamed pedestrians for safety problems
“As summarized by historian Peter Norton, "[AAA] and other members of motordom were crafting a new kind of traffic safety effort[. ...] It claimed that pedestrians were just as responsible as motorists for injuries and accidents. It ignored claims defending the historic rights of pedestrians to the streets—in the new motor age, historic precedents were obsolete.”
AAA fights gasoline tax
“Skyrocketing gas prices led AAA to testify before three Congressional committees regarding increased gasoline prices in 2000, and to lobby to prevent Congress from repealing parts of the federal gasoline tax, which would have reduced Highway Trust Fund revenue without guaranteeing consumers any relief from high gas prices.”
AAA fights mass transit
“Despite its work promoting environmental responsibility in the automotive and transportation arenas, AAA's lobbying positions have sometimes been perceived to be hostile to mass transit and environmental interests. In 2006, the Automobile Club of Southern California worked against Prop. 87. The proposition would have established a "$4 billion program to reduce petroleum consumption (in California) by 25 percent, with research and production incentives for alternative energy, alternative energy vehicles, energy efficient technologies, and for education and training."”
(edit) AAA fights for more roads and fought against the Clean Air Act
Daniel Becker, director of Sierra Club's global warming and energy program, described AAA as "a lobbyist for more roads, more pollution, and more gas guzzling."[86] He observed that among other lobbying activities, AAA issued a press release critical of the Clean Air Act, stating that it would "threaten the personal mobility of millions of Americans and jeopardize needed funds for new highway construction and safety improvements."[86] "AAA spokespeople have criticized open-space measures and opposed U.S. EPA restrictions on smog, soot, and tailpipe emissions."[87] "The club spent years battling stricter vehicle-emissions standards in Maryland, whose air, because of emissions and pollution from states upwind, is among the nation's worst."[88] As of 2017, AAA continues to lobby against public transportation projects.
Even though the roadside assistence is useless to me, the AAA membership comes with 2 more memberships. So I could give memberships to 2 family members and they would benefit from it. But it seems I need to drop this idea. AAA seems overall doing more harm than good.
AAA is a federation:
It’s interesting to realize that AAA is not a single org. It is a federation of many clubs. Some states have more than one AAA club. This complicates the decision a bit because who is to say that specific club X in state Y spent money fighting the gas tax or fighting mass transit? Is it fair to say all clubs feed money to the top where federal lobbying happens?
(edit) And doesn’t it seem foolish to oppose mass transit even from the selfish car driver standpoint? If you drive a car, other cars are in your way slowing you down and also increasing your chances of simultaneously occupying the same space (crash). Surely you would benefit from others switching from car to public transport to give you more road space. It seems to me the anti mass transit move is AAA looking after it’s own interest in having more members paying dues.
Will AAA go the direction of the NRA?
Most people know the NRA today as an evil anti gun control anti safety right wing org. It was not always that way. The NRA used to be a genuine force of good. It used to truly advocate for gun safety. Then they became hyper politicized and perversely fought for gun owner rights to the extreme extent of opposing gun safety. I wonder if AAA might take the same extreme direction as NRA, as urban planners increasingly come to their senses and start to realize cars are not good for us. Instead of being a force of saftey, AAA will likely evolve into an anti safety org in the face of safer-than-cars means of transport. (Maybe someone should start a counter org called “Safer than Cars Alliance” or “Better than Cars Alliance”)
I also noticed most AAA club’s websites block Tor. So the lack of privacy respect just made my decision to nix them even easier.
City mass transit often comes with the idea to exclude cars from inner city areas, or at least slow them down and use street space for better purposes. Which is why car lobby associations usually oppose them.