Cars
Basics
“Adam Ruins Everything” Explains the Origins of “Jaywalking”
Think the origins of "jaywalking" in 1920s car industry propaganda are too esoteric for a mainstream audience? Watch this clip from truTV's "Adam Ruins Everything" that adapts research from Peter Norton's Fighting Traffic, a history of how motordom conquered American streets in the early 20th century. It's a good sign when productions backed by the entertainment industry start devoting attention to topics like this.
October 14, 2015
Choose Your Own Utopia: What Will We Make of Driverless Cars?
Cross-posted from the Frontier Group.
October 2, 2015
Pedestrian Protection Doesn’t Come Standard in Volvo’s “City Safety” System
Warning: This video contains a disturbing moment of violence.
May 26, 2015
No, Millennials Aren’t Buying More Cars Than Gen X
Cross-posted from City Observatory.
April 22, 2015
Across the U.S., Poor Job Access Compels Even People Without Cars to Drive
Cross-posted from Brookings’ The Avenue blog. This article is the second in a short series examining new Census data on transportation trends.
October 24, 2014
Someone Has Built the Ultimate 1950s Fantasy Vehicle All Over Again
UPDATE in fourth paragraph about takeoff and landing space.
October 22, 2014
Peter Norton: We Can Learn From the Movement to Enshrine Car Dependence
Yesterday, we published part one of my interview with Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and the author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. We talked about whether the push for infrastructure investment is always code for increasing car capacity, and how the Vision Zero campaign bears the legacy of 100-year-old movements to make streets safe for everyone.
October 17, 2014
Q&A With Peter Norton: History Is on the Side of Vision Zero
Last week, a bunch of bigwigs gathered to talk infrastructure in one of Washington’s most historic and prestigious sites, the Hay-Adams Hotel across the street from the White House. I was offered an opportunity to interview former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and a host of other VIPs. But -- no offense to those guys -- the person I wanted to talk to was Peter Norton, listed as the “lead scholar” of the Miller Center’s new commission to “develop innovative, bipartisan ideas on how to create and sustain middle-class jobs through infrastructure policy.”
October 16, 2014
Talking Headways Podcast: Zero Deaths, Zero Cars, Zero Tundra Voles
Special guest Damien Newton of Streetsblog LA joins Jeff and me on this episode to tell us all about the Los Angeles DOT's new strategic plan, which includes a Vision Zero goal: zero traffic deaths by 2025, a vision all of our cities should get behind. He walks us through the oddities of LA politics and the pitfalls that may await the plan, as well as one really good reason it could succeed. (Her name is Seleta Reynolds.)
October 9, 2014
Madrid Moves Toward a Car-Free Center City
Beginning in January, Madrid will enact new policies to keep cars out of almost 500 acres in the core of the city, part of a long-term plan to entirely pedestrianize the center city.
September 29, 2014