I want to introduce a concept that will be central to this course: motornormativity. Motornormativity is a system of ideas and structures which privileges transportation by car, while disadvantaging or making impossible other possible means of transportation. Normative means referring to standards or expected behavior. Traveling by automobile is the norm and other means of transportation are not considered or taken into account. It is an interesting exercise (sometimes funny, sometimes sad or angering) to look out for ways that we see motornormativity expressed either in structures, actions or ideas. The two substantial readings for this week deal with motornormativity. Motornormativity is roughly only a hundred years old, relatively new as far as norms go. (Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908.). The reading by Peter Norton is from his book Fighting Traffic. In his book Norton describes how roads were once a “commons” available for a wide variety of usages and users. Children played in the street. People walked in the street. The street could be a market place of sort. Advocates of automobiles (motordom in Norton’s words) saw that all these uses of the streets would either lead to cars forced to go at slow speeds or large numbers of deaths and injuries, which would be unacceptable to society as a whole. Therefore they “socially constructed” roads to be the exclusive domain for automobiles, creating new “crimes” such as “jaywalking.” Susan Handy’s book looks at how we think about transportation. She shows the many problems that exist in our system today, but also how difficult it is to surmount those problems. One reason is that motornormativity has so infused our thoughts and the thoughts of transportation professionals that it is difficult to think of other alternatives.
Lewis Mumford was one of the great scholars of cities and how they were constructed. In 1958 when he saw the beginnings of the Interstate Highway system and its extension into cities, he wrote. “the current American way of life is founded not nust on motor transportation, but on the religion of the motorcar, and the sacrifices people are prepared to make for this religion stand outside the real of rational criticism.” (Lewis Mumford, The Highway and the City)
One way to think of motornormativity is to ask oneself “if we mapped this action (this structure, this thought) into a non-automotive domain, would we think it is ok? I think of the comparison with air travel. In air travel today, we don’t accept any aviation deaths and we have a remarkably safe system. It the world of motornormativity, we basically shrug our shoulders that 40,000 or so people are killed by automobiles in our country each year (and many more around the world.) There is a sense in which all the costs of the automobile that we bear without giving them much thought, such as people or greenspace displaced for the construction of highways, auto pollution, congestion and so on are examples of motornormativity.
A psychologist in Britain did a study where he took some practices common in motornormativity and tried to come up with equivalents in other types of behavior. While I don’t think the examples were perfect equivalents, the study was revealing. He found that when the questions were put in an automotive context people were far more likely to accept things that they wouldn’t accept in a non-automotive context. Here are some examples:
| There is no point expecting people to drive less, so society just needs to accept any negative consequences it causes. | There is no point expecting people to drink alcohol less, so society just needs to accept any negative consequences it causes. |
| People shouldn’t drive in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the car fumes | People shouldn’t smoke in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the cigarette fumes |
You can read a report on this study here.
I have personal experience with a relative of the second group of statements. There is a bakery I love to go to in Raleigh, called Boulted Bread. One morning I was sitting outside on a bench eating a croissant. A guy drove up in a big pickup truck and ran into the bakery while he left his truck on. The exhaust pipe was about five feet from my face and I had to move to have non-exhaust filled croissant experience. I doubt the guy would have been as inconsiderate in non-motorized contexts.
There are groups that try to challenge motornormativity in ways that make clear how unacceptable it would be in other contexts. Some of their work borders on civil disobedience. For example, in places where there are bike lanes, it is not uncommon for people driving cars to believe it is ok to park their car in a bike lane for “just a minute.” In San Francisco there is a group that patrols bike lanes and when they are blocked by a car, they then block the road for “just a minute” so that bikers can get by. I don’t recommend this behavior, and I fear it could lead to a violent confrontation sometime, but it is enlightening. Here is a video of this.
Some other examples of motornormativity:
- On Sunday evening I was riding my bike over by Centennial Campus. The traffic lights at the intersection of Avent Ferry and Varsity were set to blinking yellow in the direction of Avent Ferry. What this meant was that there was no “walk” sign for any pedestrian trying to cross Avent Ferry. They had to try to cross five lanes of traffic without getting hit by a car.
- Although we all (or almost all) use it, when you think about it, on street parking is a very odd concept. The city sets aside public space for the exclusive use of storing one group of people’s private property. (And large parts of city streets are dedicated to parking.). No other use of this space is permitted.
- Here is some advice from the Montgomery County Police in Maryland regarding back to school bicycle riding. It has gotten some negative attention from bicycle advocates. Can you see why this might be seen as an example of motornormativity?
Can you think of examples of motornormativity that you experience?