The Psychology of the Car: Automobile Admiration, Attachment, and Addiction

The Psychology of the Car

Automobile Admiration, Attachment, and Addiction

Stefan Gössling

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Acronyms

List of Boxes

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Plates

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. The Automotive System

In Love With the Automobile

Growth of the Automobile System

2. The Psychology of the Car

Car Culture

The Car in Movies

Advancing the Understanding of Automobility

The Complexity of Transport Behavior

A More Comprehensive Transport Psychology

3. Automobile Personalities and (Co)Identities

Car Driver Personalities

Cars With Personalities

Car Identity

Driver-Car Coidentities

4. Feelings, Emotions and the Car

Emotions and the Car

Fear, Anxieties, and Phobias

Power, Dominance, and Control

Anger and Aggression

Anger and Contempt

Revenge

Rebellion

Escape

5. Automobility, Gender and Sex

Car Semiotics: The Evolutionary Social Psychology of Attraction

The Car as Space for Sexual Activity

Sex on the Road

Dominance and Submission

Automobile Sexuality in Movies

Paraphilia

6. Speed

Speeding Up

Psychological Reasons for Speed

Speed=Friction

Speed and Accidents

Video Games and Speed

7. Rights, Authority, and the Police

The Right to Automobility

Hatred of Government

Police, Authority, and the Law

Driving Outside the Law

Popular Culture and Perspectives of the Police

8. Community, Friends, Family

The Importance of Relations

Community in Car Cultures

Community in Car Movies

Community and Automobility

9. Risk and Death

Risk and Death in the Automotive System

Seeking Death

Racer Biographies: Troubled Childhoods

Movies and Automobile Death

10. The Clinical Psychology of the Car

Being Mentally Ill

Personality Disorders and Transport Behavior

Communicative Violence, Private Languages, and Personality Disorders

Trauma, Neglect, Abuse: Car Movies and Real World

11. Barriers to Automobile Change

Defining Desirable Transport Futures

Car Order, Car Identity

Reconsidering Structures of Automotive Dependency

Maintaining and Validating the Automotive System

The Risk of Psychological Tipping Points

Towards Systemic Change

12. Sustainable Automotive Futures

Structures of Dependency

Interventions: Regime Change, Habits, and Car Values

Successful Interventions: Positive Communication and Reward Systems

Further Insights for the Design of Interventions

The Future is an Open Road

References

Index

Copyright

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Dedication

To Mathias, my brother

Acronyms

AAA   American Automobile Association

ADAC   Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club

ADHD   Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

BAC   Blood alcohol concentration

BBC   British Broadcasting Corporation

BMW   Bayerische Motoren Werke

BS   Boredom susceptibility

CEO   Chief economic officer

DSM   Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders

DUI   Driving under the influence

ES   Experience seeking

EU   European Union

FF   Fast and Furious (movie franchise)

GDP   Gross domestic product

HPA   Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal

IAA   Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung

ICD   International statistical classification of diseases related to health problems

ICT   Information and communication technologies

IMDb   Internet movie database

IPCC   Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

NASCAR   The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing

NSW   New South Wales

OECD   Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

OSAS   Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome

PD   Personality disorder

PTSD   Posttraumatic stress disorder

SNS   Sympathetic nervous system

SUV   Sport-utility vehicle

TAS   Thrill and adventure seeking

TMB   Travel money budget

TTB   Time travel budget

VDA   Verband der Automobilindustrie

WHO   World Health Organization

WWII   World War II

List of Boxes

Box 2.1 Car Admiration – Cultural and Technical Glamorization 24

Box 2.2 The Fast and the Furious 29

Box 2.3 The System of Automobility 35

Box 2.4 Key Insights From Complex Models of Car Use: Schwanen and Lucas (2011) 38

Box 3.1 Hot Versus Cool Driver Personalities in Movies 49

Box 3.2 Cars With Personality in Movies 56

Box 3.3 Car Lyrics (Excerpt) Depicting Specific Identities in the Context of Cars 60

Box 3.4 Bumper Stickers as Expression of Personality 61

Box 4.1 Driving as Escape: Drive (2011) 100

Box 5.1 Transformers: Oedipal Sexual Constellations Involving Cars 117

Box 6.1 Increasing Perceived Friction: Speed Limits in Bristol, UK 132

Box 6.2 Speeding: No One Thinks Big of You 135

Box 7.1 Automobile Agnotology: Energy Labels for Cars in Germany 146

Box 7.2 Hatred of Government: New Zealand Carless Days Scheme of 1979149

Box 7.3 Public Shaming of Politicians 160

Box 7.4 Gangsta rap lyrics - Ridin’ (feat. Krayzie Bone) 164

Box 7.5 Government in Movies: Death Race (2008) 168

Box 8.1 No Ridiculous Car Trips: Refusing Community 174

Box 8.2 Soon the Most Successful Music Videos in History? 183

Box 9.1 Speed and Death: Rush (2013) 208

Box 10.1 Volkswagen & Darth Vader 220

Box 10.2 Troubled Childhood Characters as a Central Feature of Car Movies 222

Box 12.1 Climate Change Stickers on Gas Pumps, Canada 256

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Growth emissions of CO2 from the transport sector, 1900–2050. 10

Figure 2.1 Factors influencing transport behavior. 37

Figure 3.1 Driver-car coidentities: capabilities. 65

Figure 6.1 Development of speed records (km/h after 1 km). 122

Figure 6.2 Average motorization of newly registered vehicles, Germany. 123

Figure 6.3 Differential speeds in urban space. 131

Figure 7.1 New car registrations in Germany: percentages April 2015 compared to previous year. 146

Figure 7.2 Interrelationships of government, police, and car drivers. 153

Figure 9.1 Fatal accidents, Isle of Man TT. 191

Figure 11.1 Real versus perceived structures of car dependency. 233

Figure 12.1 Urban modal split transition in a radically different transport future scenario. 244

Figure 12.2 Inducing change in transport behavior. 245

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Growth in Vehicle Numbers, Selected Countries 4

Table 1.2 National Congestion Cost, United States 1982–201411

Table 1.3 Share of Trips Made by Bicycle and Growth Rates, Various Cities 14

Table 2.1 The Fast and the Furious Box Office Revenues 30

Table 2.2 Examples of Failed Infrastructure Projects, Inducing New Traffic 33

Table 3.1 Personality Facets 48

Table 3.2 Bumper Sticker Categories 61

Table 4.1 Functions of Emotions 68

Table 4.2 Examples of Fears and Anxieties Related to Automobility 71

Table 4.3 Range of Anxieties Addressed in Car Advertisements 72

Table 4.4 Levels of Control in Car Driving 85

Table 4.5 Forms of Video Car Contempt 90

Table 4.6 Forms of Escape—Avoidance in the Context of Automobility 101

Table 5.1 Reproduction Strategies in the Animal Kingdom and Automotive Mimicry 105

Table 5.2 Sex Motifs in Car Movies 115

Table 7.1 Examples of Media Reports on the Police 151

Table 7.2 Examples of Reactions to Traffic Controls and Reported Violations 151

Table 7.3 Examples of Celebrity Car Choices 154

Table 7.4 Examples of Celebrity Traffic Violations 158

Table 7.5 Police Stereotyping in Car Movies 167

Table 8.1 Forms of Automobile Community 176

Table 9.1 Fatal Accidents in Car Races 190

Table 9.2 Interrelationships With Death in Car Movies 206

Table 10.1 Phobias/Anxieties With Relevance for Car Transport Behavior 214

Table 10.2 Mental Disorders and Repercussions for Transport Behavior 216

Table 10.3 Fast and Furious Conflict Motifs 225

Table 11.1 Forms of Car Dependency 232

Table 11.2 The Car Industry and Its Appeal Strategies 234

Table 12.1 Examples of Measures Changing Transport Value Perceptions 246

Table 12.2 Rational Versus Emotional Arguments in Communication Strategies 248

Table 12.3 Incentives and Rewards for Residents in Werfenweng, Austria 251

Table 12.4 Overview of Campaigns Based on Emotional Interventions 253

List of Plates

Plate 1.1 Expansion of the automotive system: 12 lanes in Dubai. 4

Plate 1.2 Car mass, weight, and motorization continue to increase: new BMW model. 6

Plate 1.3 Public transport in Barbados: air pollution is now recognized as a serious health issue. 9

Plate 1.4 Street space dedicated to car-sharing program in Freiburg, Germany. 15

Plate 2.1 Autopia: Suburb without sidewalks, Texas, United States. 20

Plate 2.2 Germany’s obsession with speed had its origin in the Third Reich: Mercedes sets a new speed record at 372 km/h in 1936. 21

Plate 2.3 Car admiration in Colmar, France. 26

Plate 2.4 Congestion: an important factor in the use of alternative transport. 33

Plate 2.5 Coincidence? A number plate in Germany. 36

Plate 2.6 Why would children admire a Koenigsegg? 39

Plate 2.7 A car brand appealing to specific personalities: Maserati 40

Plate 3.1 Car front with a personality message? Dodge Ram. 50

Plate 3.2 Change of character: Mercedes in 1970. 52

Plate 3.3 Change of character: Mercedes in 2016. 53

Plate 3.4 Nice, friendly, defensive: a car front expressing personality. 55

Plate 3.5 Branded car coidentities: children riding Mercedes car toys. 59

Plate 3.6 A car sticker as a personality warning. 62

Plate 3.7 Aspirational identity: concept study of the Maybach 63

Plate 4.1 Preempting or confirming fears? Sign defining safe parking for women, Germany. 73

Plate 4.2 Notions of a postapocalyptic world: advertisement screen displayed at Autosalon, Geneve. 74

Plate 4.3 Fear message to influence driving styles, Australia. 76

Plate 4.4 Emission levels of newly registered cars: a form of fear messaging? 78

Plate 4.5 Tesla addressing cruising range anxiety. 80

Plate 4.6 Risk and safety as key features of car advertisement: Volkswagen. 83

Plate 4.7 In control: the cockpit of Porsche Panamera. 84

Plate 4.8 Angry in traffic: evolution in BMW car fronts. 88

Plate 4.9 A car to avenge: Batpod. 91

Plate 4.10 Car nuts in use in Queensland, Australia. 96

Plate 4.11 Coal rolling as form of rebellion. 98

Plate 4.12 Nowhere to go but everywhere. 101

Plate 5.1 Indicating a good mate? Bentley signaling resourcefulness and protection. 108

Plate 5.2 The car as expression of maleness, power, and dominance: Brabus 500. 109

Plate 5.3 Fuck, a new alcoholic drink presented at a car exhibition, Germany. 114

Plate 5.4 Car exhibitions and the female object: Autosalon Genève, Switzerland. 115

Plate 6.1 Marketing focused on speed: Corvette. 127

Plate 6.2 Female reactions to fast cars. 130

Plate 6.3 Australian campaign to address speeding. 136

Plate 6.4 Child in car simulator video game. 138

Plate 7.1 German campaign Reduce your speed! 140

Plate 7.2 Automobile rights and contested space. 142

Plate 7.3 Closer to the public: female police on bikes, Paris, France. 144

Plate 7.4 Deliberate (?) parking violation. 148

Plate 7.5 Historic Beetle used to curry sympathy for police. 153

Plate 7.6 Too much government? 169

Plate 8.1 Sociality in motion (and stasis): the home from home as microcommunity. 179

Plate 8.2 Car community: race team celebration in Hockenheim, Germany. 180

Plate 8.3 An offer of community: car lobbying organization in search of new members. 184

Plate 9.1 A celebrity death crash site turned tourist attraction. 189

Plate 9.2 NASCAR crash: how important is the prospect of death in the appeal of races? 192

Plate 9.3 James Hunt winning the Formula 1 World Championship in 1976. 199

Plate 10.1 Public transport infrastructure as space of fear. 213

Plate 10.2 A scenic drive, killing time, or a reflection of a mood disorder? 216

Plate 11.1 Car order. 230

Plate 11.2 A more desirable transport future? 231

Plate 11.3 Initiative to challenge car domination. 234

Plate 11.4 Be aware of government: information on taxation at German fuel station. 237

Plate 11.5 Parking violations unchallenged: evidence of a tipping point? 239

Plate 12.1 Like father, like son: Rolls-Royce admiration. 242

Plate 12.2 Positive communication: We respect each other campaign in Freiburg, Germany. 248

Plate 12.3 Cycling as major transport mode in Copenhagen, Denmark. 249

Plate 12.4 Increasing perceived safety (with a view): physically separated cycle track along the river in Brisbane. 252

Plate 12.5 Incentive system: car charger stations in Paris. 255

Plate 12.6 Warning labels on gas pumps. 257

Plate 12.7 Gas pump label design as suggested by industry. 258

Plate 12.8 One possible future: car-free island of Juist, Germany. 259

Preface

Nino [looking at a convertible]: Now this… that is one mother-f∗∗king, fine-a∗∗, p∗∗∗-mobile…! Damn!

Drive (2011)

Perhaps a book on the psychology of the car demands a positioning of the author. As probably most readers of this book, I have been socialized in a car-centric world. Growing up in a suburban area about 5  km outside a medium-sized town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, most of my childhood memories are entangled in transport dependency; we went to school by bus, were taken to sports practice by car, and drove to see family or friends on weekends. I got my driving license 08-08-88, a magic date marking independence more than my 18th birthday a day earlier. Soon after, the car afforded my first better-paid student job as a newspaper photographer and freelancer. I also associate the car with first escapes, driving nowhere in particular in the middle of the night with a friend, movement being a goal in its own right. The car was the means of transport during my first real holiday, a trip to Spain with my girlfriend (and later wife) at the age of 22. We drifted south in search of October warmth, and prayed that the car, her father’s aged VW Golf, wouldn’t break down. Countless trips have been made by car since then, and we (still) own a small car today. However, trains became our favorite transport mode a long time ago, and as a family, we nowadays associate highways with congestion and stress, places to avoid.

Yet, this is only half the story of my relationship with the car. In my childhood days in the 1970s, suburban structures were different. In most small communities, there existed a local post office, a bank, an ice cream parlor, a restaurant, and a local minimarket, catering to a few thousand people (these are long gone). Because everything you needed was close by, people walked or cycled. I have been told that I rode my little bicycle to the day care center for the first time when I was 3  years old. When I turned 7, school required a longer trip, which I later made by bike as well. Today, this would probably pass as a serious case of parental neglect, as I had to ride along a major road with a 100  km/h speed limit and no safety strip, and I remember cars flying by in a blur while pedaling up the hill. At the age of 16, it took all my savings to buy a British racing bike, which brought independence and speed. I loved that silver, smooth bike, and even today, riding a bike continues to represent my idea of freedom.

Our daughter was born into this constellation in 2005. She surprised us when her first word was bil (Swedish for car), bearing evidence of the great fascination cars have for children. At the age of two and a half, she told her astonished parents from the back seat of the car that When I am grown up, I will buy a car and drive around all day. At the age of 6, she began walking to primary school every morning, and later on, at the age of 10, she started to ride her bike to the new school 2  km away. At 12, she has an ambivalent relationship with cars, which she occasionally likes (to be taken someplace), though normally despises because she knows that cars contribute to climate change and air pollution. Such views are not necessarily the norm. My wife, a teacher in a rural area, recently asked third-graders how they imagined their lives as grown-ups. The children agreed on only one thing: they would all own a car.

Why this book, then? Perhaps, on the most basic level, it is a matter of curiosity. When you live in a car-centered world, you want to make sense of it. I am also fascinated with traffic emotions. As a bicyclist, I have been shot angry looks, yelled at, and been (almost) run over more often than I care to remember. As a driver and passenger in a car, I have seen all sorts of reckless driving, and witnessed the death of a young woman in an accident. There is aggressiveness in the automotive system that has troubled me for a long time. During the research for this book, I told my daughter about car faces, and asked her what she would make of a car with four headlights. She did not have to think: It’s a monster. Perhaps this is what I have had on my mind all along, that a world without monsters must be a more desirable one.

This book is consequently about change. It is meant to contribute to an understanding of the psychological roots of automobile culture, through which it becomes possible to envision, design, and implement futures in which cars lose relevance. There is a growing movement questioning cars. Governments have started to realize that the car is heavily subsidized, with evidence that each driven kilometer incurs a cost to society not covered by taxes, charges, and fees. The car reduces quality of life in cities, and it requires vast areas of land for road infrastructure and parking. Health concerns related to air pollution have emerged worldwide, while the lack of activity of automobile populations is measurable in increasing numbers of people who are overweight and obese. More than 1  million people die every year in traffic accidents, and up to 50  million are injured. Climate change is caused to a large degree by transport emissions. For all of these reasons, we need to rethink the automotive system.

However, actual evidence of change is more limited. New car registrations continue to grow, with expectations of 2  billion cars by 2030, one for every four humans. Many people now spend more time commuting than they are given for their annual holiday. Car sizes, weight, and motorization continue to grow, while nobody would seriously expect political initiatives to significantly curb automobility since the backlash from automobile lobbies is known to be unforgiving. There is also an ominous silence in society on the impacts of the automobile system, and unwillingness to discuss its implications. More people are killed by cars every year than in battle during World War II. The automotive system demands a sacrifice that we are curiously willing to offer.

Observations such as these require a new look at automobility, and this book seeks to understand our fundamental love of cars. It provides a wide range of (old and new) perspectives on automobile admiration, attachment, and addiction. Its most notable insight is perhaps that we are not as much dependent on the car as being made dependent. There are powerful interests at work to psychologically engineer car addiction—addicts, conveniently, never question their behavior. Other insights pertain to the role of cars with regard to emotions, sociality, sex and gender, speed, authority, and death. We need to understand these interrelationships to unlock the possibility of alternative transport futures.

This book was written in the second half of 2016, and it provides an analysis of automobile culture up to this point. It is focused on industrialized countries, and contains much material and many examples from the countries where I am at home, Germany and Sweden. In many ways, this book is limited. Setting out to write a book that would grasp the complexity of our social, cultural, and psychological entanglement with the car, I had to realize that, at best, this book will serve as an introduction. Many linkages are only discussed at the very surface of their complexity, and others barely outlined.

There is also a broad claim underlying this book, i.e., that many of our social norms and personal constructs are influenced by popular culture including movies, literature, music, and games. Movies in particular, as visual media, seem to have great power in shaping personal identities and social norms. In movies, we learn about the world, but we also discover ourselves, and considerable attention is thus paid to the role of popular culture in creating and validating automobile culture.

Last, it is possible that I have misinterpreted or misunderstood results or theories I cite, or contexts I develop. I acknowledge these shortcomings, in the hope that the book will be a starting point for a more comprehensive exploration of this complex field.

Stefan Gössling

Freiburg and Köpingsvik, February 2017

Acknowledgments

José: In this country you ain’t nothing if you got no wheels.

The Gumball Rally (1976)

Many people have supported this book, directly and indirectly. First and foremost, without the inspiration and insight of Mathias Gößling, this book would not exist. Mathias’s patience in explaining the world to me has made me realize the fundamental importance of psychology for transport behavior. Mathias also provided the analysis for several discussions in this book, including the recognition and interpretation of Oedipal constellations in Transformers, and the focus on childhood neglect as a marketing strategy in Volkswagen’s Darth Vader commercial. His paper on communicative violence and personality disorder in the context of car advertisement (Gößling and Eckert, 2008) reveals the powerful forces of marketing appeal, and the complex and profound analyses needed to understand these interrelationships. This book is dedicated to Mathias, because it is owed to his insights.

My family, Meike and Linnea, have been immensely helpful in discussing many of the issues taken up in this book. Meike is a sharp analyst of the human psyche, and contributed many insights. Linnea is a driving force in my disentangling of our human-environmental relations. She demands to know why the world is the way it is and forces me to reconsider the rationality of the human enterprise. Behavior is an open book for those who wish to understand, though more often we seem to prefer not to. I hope that Linnea will be able to live in a future with fewer cars, for the simple reason that this would indicate that the world has gained in empathy.

Many requests for permission to reproduce material were sent to car manufacturers, car rental companies, automobile lobby organizations, and marketing agencies. Virtually all had in common that they either declined permission or insisted on such complex contracts that it was no longer meaningful to pursue inclusion in the book. This is unfortunate, because some issues discussed in this book would have profited from illustrations. While this confirms that the automotive world is a secretive one, I am indebted in particular to Volkswagen, Mercedes, and Porsche for supporting me with photographic material in nonbureaucratic and efficient ways.

Without colleagues and collaboration, science cannot exist. I am extremely grateful to C. Michael Hall and Daniel Scott, colleagues and friends, for 15  years of collaboration on environmental and developmental questions. I am also indebted to many colleagues in various places (in no particular order): Carlo Aall, Torkjel Solbraa, Ivar Petter Grøtte, Hans Jakob Walnum, Svein Ølnes, Otto Andersen, Eivind Brendehaug, Halvor Dannevig, Agnes Brudvik Engeset, Guttorm Flatabø, Martin Gren, Johan Hultman, Jan Henrik Nilsson, Janet Dickinson, Daniel Metzler, Kaely Dekker, Julia Hibbert, James Higham, Paul Peeters, Eke Eijgelaar, Dietrich Brockhagen, Robert Bockermann, Brent Ritchie, Robert Steiger, Bruno Abegg, Ghislain Dubois, Jean-Paul Ceron, Jens-Kristian Steen Jacobsen, Carlos Martin-Rios, Wolfgang Strasdas, Dagmar Lund-Durlacher, Werner Gronau, Debbie Hopkins, Jo Guiver, Yael Ram, Anna Katarina Elofsson, Sara Dolnicar, Scott Cohen, Hansruedi Müller, Philipp Späth, Samuel Mössner, Tim Freytag, Bernard Lane, Andy Maun, Ralf Buckley, David Weaver, Holger Schäfers, Nathan and Antoinette Franklin, Veit Bürger, and Jan and Julia Bergk. I am also indebted to hundreds of colleagues who paved the way for this book through their work; Helga Dittmar and Linda Steg in particular deserve to be mentioned, as the book relies in considerable part on the distinction of symbolic, affective, and instrumental car values. I humbly apologize to anyone whose work I have misinterpreted or presented in insufficient detail.

Various people contributed to valuable discussions and insights with direct and indirect relevance for this book, including Sabine Bode, Christer Ljungberg, Peter Brandauer, Roman Molitor, Niels Jensen, Marie Kåstrup, Frank Schreier III, Andreas Hege, Thomas Vodde, Robert Shirkey, and Patrik Müller. I am also indebted to the Freiburg traffic police corps, who devoted considerable time to valuable and insightful interviews. For sharing alternative forms of mobility, thanks to Markus Hierl, Dirk Niehues, Michael Metz, and Guifré Ruiz Acero. Paul Hanna read parts of an earlier version of the manuscript (all mistakes remain my own). Katinka Hurst helped to prepare the book for publication, investing much time and energy. I am also indebted to Brian Romer at Elsevier for giving the title a chance, and Kattie Washington for her patience in dealing with many issues in the publication process. Punithavathy Govindaradjane has been an immensely helpful production project manager.

My special thanks go to all politicians who dare to advocate alternative transport futures. In Germany, they include Barbara Hendricks, Winfried Hermann, Anton Hofreiter, Boris Palmer, Karl Langensteiner-Schönborn, and Helmut Thoma. Worldwide, personalities that deserve to be mentioned include Arnold Schwarzenegger, who implemented low-pollution laws in California; Isabella Lövin, who pushed for a 70% emissions reduction in the Swedish transport sector; Klaus Bondham, who mainstreamed bicycle culture in Copenhagen; and Peter Brandauer, who explored (and explores) new transport cultures in Werfenweng, Austria. It takes guts to think differently, to challenge the automotive system. These individuals (and many others not mentioned here) deserve to be praised for rethinking automobile order.

1

The Automotive System

Abstract

This chapter sets the overall context of the book, that is, the massive growth in the automobile system over the past 100  years and its implications for urban planning, health, and environment. There are now an estimated 1.3  billion vehicles on the road, with expectations that these will increase to total 2  billion by 2030. There is also evidence that passenger cars gain motorization and mass. Negative externalities of traffic continue to grow in line with these developments: accidents, air pollution, congestion, noise, and the transport sector's contribution to climate change have all become more urgently discussed over the past decade. Yet, there is also evidence of change—interest in driving licensure and car ownership appears to be in decline in many cities and there is a growing interest in city cycling. Information and communication technologies have made public transport more convenient. Car- and ride-sharing systems are growing rapidly, and individualized transport services have begun to replace private cars.

Keywords

Accidents; Air pollution; Automotive system; Car ownership; Urban transport culture; Vehicle numbers

Manager [amid noise from racing cars starting up]: Ah, what music! They could never have imagined it, those pioneers who invented the automobile, that it would possess us like this, in our imaginations, our dreams.

Rush (2013)

In Love With the Automobile

In his introduction to Car Cultures, Miller (2001: p. 1) reminisces, telling a particular story to his daughter: An alien observing the Earth comes to the conclusion that the planet is inhabited by four-wheeled creatures, who are served by slaves on two legs. These slaves would spend their whole lives serving them, feeding them liquid foods and caring for them when they have accidents. Miller’s reversing narrative of our relationship with cars is unsettling, as it begets the question whether humanity is now so car addicted that it serves cars, rather than the other way around.

There can be little doubt that the car is one of people’s most cherished technical and cultural items. Over the past 100  years, the car has seen massive growth in distribution and use, with estimates that humanity collectively owns 1.3  billion vehicles (Statista, 2016). The omnipresence and reverence of the car is the focus of this book, which seeks to understand why a cultural item that has only existed for three generations in most countries could assume such central importance, across geographical and cultural borders. The success of the car, it will argue, can only be fully understood by considering its functions beyond its capacity to transport people from one location to another. While this is not a novel insight (Miller, 2001; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Steg, 2005), perspectives in this book will provide answers from psychological viewpoints and thus provide an extended understanding of our interrelationship with the car.

Automobility is deeply woven into the fabric of most societies, shaping social and personal identities. It is also part of emotions, fears, and anxieties, and the search for social connectedness. Through the car, we take risks and compete, we are empowered, control, and express dominance. We take revenge, escape, or kill time. The car also has importance for relationships with authority and death. This book argues that these aspects of automobility have been insufficiently discussed in the literature; yet understanding them is essential for unlocking the possibility of a future with fewer cars. In contrast to Sperling and Gordon (2009), who open up for two billion cars, this book will argue that more desirable transport futures will be characterized by fewer, not more vehicles.

There may be a window of opportunity for a low-automobility future, a result of trends that indicate a decline in the interest in automobility. By understanding the psychology of car admiration, affection, and addiction, there is a chance to fundamentally change automobile culture. Such a vision of more desirable transport futures is largely based on voluntary change, and hence contradicts the more restrictive, legislated transport futures advocated by others (e.g., Sutton, 2015).

Growth of the Automobile System

Gottfried Daimler developed the first vehicle powered by a combustion engine in 1886 (Wolf, 1996), triggering the worldwide growth of the car industry. The first American-made automobile was presented in 1893 in Massachusetts, and by 1900, there were 8000 vehicles registered in the United States (Foster, 1983). It did not take long for this prototype to become a product of mass production and consumption. The year 1900 saw the production of 4200 automobiles in the United States, 28% of these electric (Schiffer, 1994). In 1908, Henry Ford introduced mass production, which reached an annual output of 300,000 cars in 1914, and a total of 15  million units of the Model T between 1908 and 1927 (Ford, 2012). At its high in the mid-1920s, Ford’s factories produced more than 2  million cars per year, and up to 9000 in a single day. In the 1930s, cars were already available to most of the US population, at a rate of 200 cars for every 1000 Americans (Nadis and McKenzie, 1993; Sperling and Gordon, 2009). Similar developments were observed in other parts of the world, and in particular in the prosperous years after World War II, global vehicle numbers saw superexponential growth, increasing from 122  million in 1960 to 812  million in 2002, to 1.3  billion in 2014 (Dargay et al., 2007; Statista, 2016).

The success of the car has never been one of genuine demand, however. Throughout its history, the automotive system has been implemented by industry in cooperation with policy makers. For example, in the United States, car ownership demanded fuel stations, of which there were 15,000 available by 1920, 46,900 by 1924, and 121,500 by 1929 (Melaina, 2007). In US cities, the presence of cars led to competition over space, and streets became contested, now shared between children at play, pushcart vendors, horse-drawn vehicles, pedestrians, and streetcars (Norton, 2008). Streets, once representing a public space, were now frequented by cars, which operated at higher speeds, and quickly became a risk to other traffic participants. This became the main argument for the allocation of streets to automobiles—pedestrians were labeled jaywalkers and forced from the street, against considerable resistance (Norton, 2008).

The progress of the car and the (re-)design of cities for the automobile were processes supported, driven, and financed by car and oil industries. These industries had an explicit interest to redefine cities as automobile cities. The US streetcar, for instance, disappeared in at least 45 cities in the period 1927–55 because companies including General Motors and Standard Oil established front companies to buy up electrified streetcar lines, which then were torn up to make room for and to create dependencies on motorized transport (Urry, 2013). The lack of public transport, along with urban sprawl, became the two most relevant factors subsequently necessitating automobility (Newman and Kenworthy, 2015). In the 1950s, and in particular the 1960s, the car then became the epitome of the American dream, and was closely associated with prosperity, freedom, and independence (Graves-Brown, 1997; Kerr, 2002).

Similar developments took place in Europe. In Germany, debates in 1912 focused on the question as to whether pedestrians should be blamed for their own death if involved in accidents with cars (Sachs, 1984). In the 1930s, Volkswagen and the building of a national highway system became an opportunity for Hitler to interlink the country and to promote unity (Sachs, 1984). In the 1970s, the car became a symbol of mass participation in the development of social democracy (Miller, 2001), and German transport minister Georg Leber, a social democrat, suggested in 1966 that: no German should live farther than 20  km from the next highway ramp (BBSR, 2012: no page). The car became central to the German understanding of modernity, which may in no small part have been inspired by the wish to leave behind the trauma of World War II. Access to the highway system became a key focus of national politics with long-lasting consequences. Today, 94% of the German population can reach the next highway in less than 30  min (Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development, 2012).

Automotive hegemony was a pan-European phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s, in which functionalism and notions of the modern city inspired urban planning (e.g., Koglin and Rye, 2014; Sutton, 2015). This also included social housing developments in urban peripheries, which were often poorly connected to centres of urban commerce (Miciukiewicz and Vigar, 2012: p. 1943). Urban planning necessitating automobility became a norm, and as outlined by Lucas (2006: p. 802), a result of continued UK transport policies focusing on the car is that it is now virtually impossible to carry out basic daily activities without a car in many parts of the country. In most parts of Europe, walking and cycling became irrelevant transport modes in the 1960s, and in particular the bicycle was increasingly considered as a means of leisure transportation (Koglin and Rye, 2014). Transport planning focused on the expected growth in individual motorized mobility, based on predict and provide planning principles (Hutton, 2013; Whitelegg, 1997). Large-scale road construction, including urban highways (Nuhn and Hesse, 2006) within neoliberal frameworks of market-based demand assessments (Beyazit, 2011) became the norm (Plate 1.1). Similar processes have more recently taken place in Asia, where private cars have replaced bicycles (Gilbert and Perl, 2008; Hook and Replogle, 1996; Pucher et al., 2007).

Table 1.1 shows how vehicle numbers have grown in large economies since the 1960s. In the period 1960–2002, they increased at least threefold in the United States and up to 100-fold in China. Worldwide, vehicle ownership has now reached 1236  million (2014; Statista, 2016). In the future, this trend is projected to continue. Dargay et al. (2007) model vehicle ownership as a function of income, concluding that there will be more than 2  billion vehicles by 2030. In 2002, about a quarter of all vehicles in the world were owned by non- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, but this is anticipated to change by 2030, when 56% of all vehicles are expected to be owned by people living in non-OECD countries. Huo et al. (2007) project, for example, that vehicle growth in China will continue to 2050, reaching 486–662  million. Notably, China is now a larger car market than the United States, expected