Catherine Lutz
Recent Posts
After Years of Resistance, Auto Industry Agrees to New Mileage Standards
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As though to prove compromise isn’t as stiff a corpse as it appears, the Obama administration announced on Friday that it had reached a key agreement with an industry proficient at stonewalling government regulation: the automakers. The deal, which meaningfully raises fuel economy standards, was something of a welcome surprise, with the industry putting aside […]
The Once and Future Auto Bailouts
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You’d think the Obama campaign had confused Michigan and Ohio with Iowa and New Hampshire. As his 2012 Republican challengers flooded early primary states last month, the President instead headed to where he could stand beside beaming auto executives and watch proud workers toiling on once-idle assembly lines. The Obama administration and the industry have […]
Five Media Myths That Perpetuate Car Culture
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Another day, another news story, another media outlet wielding an old saw like this one: high gas prices are a political problem for the president because Americans “love their cars.” American car culture, fed by everything from our sprawled out landscape to a daily bombardment of car ads, is kept alive by journalists’ use of […]
This Is Your Brain on Cars—Oh, and Your Lungs and Heart and Gut, Too
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Gerontologists in a laboratory at the University of Southern California exposed a group of mice to the same atmospheric conditions that humans encounter when driving along the freeway. Horrifyingly, they discovered that the mice’s brains showed the kind of swelling and inflammation associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The researchers didn’t super-dose to get these […]
How Ad Dollars Help Explain the Media’s Bike Backlash
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The media loves drama, of course. As your high school English teacher explained it, if Hamlet doesn’t get pissed about his dad’s murder or if Atticus Finch doesn’t step up to defend a black man falsely accused — that is, if somebody doesn’t say no, you’ve got no story. So the vociferous opposition of a […]
Driving While Human
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Our local paper recently ran the story of Edith Cameron, killed in a car crash on a road we sometimes use. We anxiously scanned the column looking for that something that one of the drivers involved must have done wrong—the thing that we surely would never do, like hit the road without a seatbelt or […]
Creative Crusaders Who Inspired Us in 2010
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Travelling the country this past year promoting our book Carjacked, we met some pretty remarkable people who are working to reduce the price Americans pay for mobility. In the book we detail how our car dependent transportation system offers an awesome array of downsides, though they are often obscured by the auto industry’s relentless marketing […]
Ad Nauseam 2010: The Year in Car Commercials
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Car sales are up, auto shows are packing them in, and the GM IPO was oversubscribed, but there may be no surer indicator of the auto industry’s recovery than the renewed avalanche of car ads rumbling across every medium. And there’s no better way to get a glimpse of what a born-again car culture might […]
Driven to the Poorhouse: How Car Title Lenders Prey on Americans
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The cheerful come-ons seem more cheesy than sleazy — “Looking for a New Way to Borrow?” “Apply Now-Get Cash Today!” “Go From $0 to Cash in Less Than an Hour” — but these are not the friendly offers of local diversified banks. They are the insidious pitches of companies that do one thing very well: […]
Electric Car Fever and Polar Bear Halos
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Over the next few months, electric cars will start rolling out of showrooms and onto American roads. They’ve been a long time coming. For years, Chevy has been trumpeting its yet-to-be-released Volt. Journalists test drove a version of it over eighteen months ago; it’s been a perennial feature at auto shows; this summer President Obama […]
Our Mobile Money Pits: The True Cost of Cars
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Rowena learned about the true cost of cars the hard way. Raised by her mom, a Filipina immigrant, in a happy if carless home in northern California, Rowena marveled upon graduating from college and getting a steady job that she could afford to lease her very own car. For a small down payment and $199 […]
BP, Toyota, and the Illusion of the Car System Techno-Fix
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Last Christmas, an Oregon couple driving with their baby in the backseat followed erroneous GPS instructions and got stranded on wilderness roads in a Cascades snowstorm. Twelve hours later, they had given up hope and taped a farewell video. While a rescue party fortunately was able to save them, they no doubt wished they hadn’t […]