Driving vs Active Travel: Changing Our Cultural Perceptions

[Cudzoziemiec]

An article from the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation on "motonormativity", especially its economic aspects.

https://www.ciht.org.uk/blogs/driving-vs-active-travel-changing-our-cultural-perceptions/

Motonormativity
The status-quo is a powerful thing and with some bold exceptions, the UK is in the grip of a status-quo that has been a century in the making – motorisation. It has permeated culture at many levels, whether or not somebody actually owns or drives a motor vehicle. It is embedded to the point where we now have a word to describe this phenomenon – “motonormativity”, otherwise known as “car brain”.


The term comes from recent polling-based research by Walker, Tapp and Davis; “Motonormativity: How social norms hide a major public health hazard”; which essentially found there to be a cultural blind spot which sees people, including non-drivers, applying double standards when they think about driving and which is real, measurable and pervasive. For example a statement was made which said “if somebody leaves their car in the street and it gets stolen, it’s their own fault for leaving it there and the police shouldn’t be expected to act”. The polling had 87% of people disagreeing, whereas the same statement with car replaced with “belongings” had 37% of people disagreeing.

....

[Adam]

Yup.  In the UK we're stuck in a motorised dead-end.  Most people are so wedded to the concept of using their car for everything, that it's seen as a default requirement, and anything that stops that is BAD.

I now imagine Charlton Heston in that scene when he was Chief Loon of the Gun Brigade saying "you can take my car keys from my cold, dead hands".

[iandusud]

That is such a good article, and it is worth clicking the link to the research paper referred to and downloading and reading it.

[Adam]

An added problem, as I've flagged up elsewhere, is that in June the DfT were told that their priority is to "keep traffic flowing", so that means active travel takes a back seat.  There will be more comments from Ministers in the run-up to the election about being on the side of "hard-working motorists".