Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake? is an article from New Yorker that examines the disconnect between man and machine in the age of the automobile. This article looks at how cars have irreversibly changed social norms and landscapes, often at a great cost to the environment. Key learnings from the article include:
• Automobiles have drastically altered the social and environmental landscapes, leading to a great deal of public health and ecological devastation.
• We are more disconnected from the open landscape than ever before, and our obsessive dependence on cars has come at an immense cost.
• Ideas that cars can be transformative machines to bring freedom and prosperity have all but been lost in the modern day.
As a UX designer, this article and book provide insight into the power of design to shape social and ecological change and how our designs can be used to improve public health and sustainability. Other books that may be of interest include: Driving Change: How Automotive Startups are Reshaping the Car Business by Markus Hinterhofer, Automated: How the Car Transformed Human Mobility by William J. Mitchell, and Autopia: Cars and Culture by John Lienhard.
🎀 Highlights
visited a parking lot forty-five minutes north of town and got behind the wheel for what I hoped would be the first real rite of my adulthood.
age of driving may be merely a cul-​de-​sac in transportation history.Illustration
age of driving may be merely a cul-​de-​sac in transportation
learned to recognize the make of vehicles by the logo
I grew to understand the people in my life according to their cars;
This was the late eighties. Gas prices had fallen, and the roads were knotty with cars from across the world.
it involved moving at speed behind the wheel.
I no longer remember what, as a small child, I envisaged for my future, but I know that it involved moving at speed behind the wheel.
I was learning in my parents’ highly defatigable ride, a minivan with an all-plastic interior and the turning radius of a dump truck.
“hypnotized” by trusses passing alongside the road.
huge appetitive machine that interacted with the world through its own strength and expressed urges I did not.
It felt like being observed during a first attempt at slow dancing;
In America today, there are more cars than drivers.
more than 3.6 million people have died in traffic accidents in the United States, and more than eighty million have been injured;
combustion engines have helped create a climate crisis, and the quest for oil has led our soldiers into war.
Free men and women on the open road have turned out to be such disastrous drivers that carmakers are developing computers to replace them.
had faster acceleration, better braking, and powerful torque, which compensated for the heft of their batteries.
few early motorists were travelling much farther.
Electrical power was the moon shot of its age, quiet, futuristic, and the vanguard of human accomplishment.
in 1902, an electric car briefly attained an astonishing hundred and two miles per hour—and
Columbia bicycle company, entered the car business, in 1896,
“You can’t get people to sit over an explosion,”
cars’ changing social and cultural position
Electrics—quiet, practical, and, in one engineer’s estimation, “tame”—took on female associations.
visited a parking lot forty-five minutes north of town and got behind the wheel for what I hoped would be the first real rite of my adulthood.
age of driving may be merely a cul-​de-​sac in transportation history.Illustration
age of driving may be merely a cul-​de-​sac in transportation
learned to recognize the make of vehicles by the logo
I grew to understand the people in my life according to their cars;
This was the late eighties. Gas prices had fallen, and the roads were knotty with cars from across the world.
it involved moving at speed behind the wheel.
I no longer remember what, as a small child, I envisaged for my future, but I know that it involved moving at speed behind the wheel.
I was learning in my parents’ highly defatigable ride, a minivan with an all-plastic interior and the turning radius of a dump truck.
“hypnotized” by trusses passing alongside the road.
huge appetitive machine that interacted with the world through its own strength and expressed urges I did not.
It felt like being observed during a first attempt at slow dancing;
In America today, there are more cars than drivers.
more than 3.6 million people have died in traffic accidents in the United States, and more than eighty million have been injured;
combustion engines have helped create a climate crisis, and the quest for oil has led our soldiers into war.
Free men and women on the open road have turned out to be such disastrous drivers that carmakers are developing computers to replace them.
had faster acceleration, better braking, and powerful torque, which compensated for the heft of their batteries.
few early motorists were travelling much farther.
Electrical power was the moon shot of its age, quiet, futuristic, and the vanguard of human accomplishment.
in 1902, an electric car briefly attained an astonishing hundred and two miles per hour—and
Columbia bicycle company, entered the car business, in 1896,
“You can’t get people to sit over an explosion,”
cars’ changing social and cultural position
Electrics—quiet, practical, and, in one engineer’s estimation, “tame”—took on female associations.
visited a parking lot forty-five minutes north of town and got behind the wheel for what I hoped would be the first real rite of my adulthood.
age of driving may be merely a cul-​de-​sac in transportation history.Illustration
age of driving may be merely a cul-​de-​sac in transportation
learned to recognize the make of vehicles by the logo
I grew to understand the people in my life according to their cars;
This was the late eighties. Gas prices had fallen, and the roads were knotty with cars from across the world.
it involved moving at speed behind the wheel.
I no longer remember what, as a small child, I envisaged for my future, but I know that it involved moving at speed behind the wheel.
I was learning in my parents’ highly defatigable ride, a minivan with an all-plastic interior and the turning radius of a dump truck.
“hypnotized” by trusses passing alongside the road.
huge appetitive machine that interacted with the world through its own strength and expressed urges I did not.
It felt like being observed during a first attempt at slow dancing;
In America today, there are more cars than drivers.
more than 3.6 million people have died in traffic accidents in the United States, and more than eighty million have been injured;
combustion engines have helped create a climate crisis, and the quest for oil has led our soldiers into war.
Free men and women on the open road have turned out to be such disastrous drivers that carmakers are developing computers to replace them.
had faster acceleration, better braking, and powerful torque, which compensated for the heft of their batteries.
few early motorists were travelling much farther.
Electrical power was the moon shot of its age, quiet, futuristic, and the vanguard of human accomplishment.
in 1902, an electric car briefly attained an astonishing hundred and two miles per hour—and
Columbia bicycle company, entered the car business, in 1896,
“You can’t get people to sit over an explosion,”
cars’ changing social and cultural position
Electrics—quiet, practical, and, in one engineer’s estimation, “tame”—took on female associations.
