Car culture
Basics
Temp Tags Begone! After Streetsblog Investigation, Texas Eliminates Paper License Plates
Texas will eliminate temporary license plates — the paper versions of real plates that nefarious dealers and outright crooks around the country are selling to drivers to avoid speed cameras, commit other vehicular crimes or simply to keep driving if they lack insurance or a driver's license.
June 15, 2023
Opinion: Why We Should Stop Using the Word ‘Micromobility’
"SUVs, pick-up trucks, and passenger cars should not be the benchmark by which we judge the size of other forms of transit, and the term ‘micromobility’ encourages us to believe that they are."
June 12, 2023
How Auto-Centric Infrastructure Is Making Us Sick
Instead of endless promises to fix America's "crumbling roads and bridges," filmmaker Andy Boenau argues we need to talk about our crumbling minds and bodies — and how our autocentric infrastructure approach contributes to them.
June 8, 2023
The Debt Ceiling Deal Could Be Bad News For Freeway Fighters
A poison pill buried within the new debt ceiling deal would "gut" key elements of the nation's bedrock environmental law in exchange for preventing a national default, advocates warn, and could make it easier for highway-building agencies to expedite road projects that harm vulnerable communities for generations.
June 2, 2023
Opinion: Could You Go a Week Without Driving? (Yes — And Here’s Why You Should)
If you can drive and can afford a car, you probably don’t understand what it’s like to rely, day in and out, on walking, rolling, transit, or asking or paying for rides. But this is every day for non-drivers.
May 25, 2023
Two Massacres in Texas — One With a Car, One With a Gun — Reveal Two Sides of the Culture of Violence
Two eerily similar mass killings in Texas had very different coverage. One involved a gun. The other, a car.
May 10, 2023
How Does Toxic Masculinity Play Out On Our Roads — And How Do We Stop It?
On this episode of the Brake, host Kea Wilson sits down with researcher and urban planning professor Tara Goddard to talk about how toxic masculinity plays out on our roads and what can we be done to stop it. Listen in.
April 11, 2023
Why Traffic Studies Are ‘Junk Science’ — And Why We Rely On Them Anyway
Community leaders and the courts are putting too much faith into dubious traffic studies that always seem to predict more and more driving, a new study argues — but that could all change.
April 4, 2023
How to Reframe the Narrative About Car Dependency
On today's episode of The Brake, host Kea Wilson brings you an extended interview with Grant Ennis, author of Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Harms Our Health and the Environment. Listen now.
March 28, 2023
Stop the Spin: How to Spot Nine Types of Auto-Industry Disinformation
Corporate disinformation has played a key role in creating America's deadly transportation culture — and it will keep happening until advocates learn to spot the most common forms of spin and organize against the policies they helped create.
March 13, 2023
