Autonorama: Do We Really Want High-Tech Car Dependency? (video available)

In this episode, I welcome Peter Norton back to the Pod for a conversation about his new book Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving and what we, as a society, really want our future to look like.

In Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving, technology historian Peter Norton argues that driverless cars cannot be the safe, sustainable, and inclusive “mobility solutions” that tech companies and automakers are promising us. The salesmanship behind the driverless future is distracting us from investing in better ways to get around that we can implement now. Unlike autonomous vehicles, these alternatives are inexpensive, safe, sustainable, and inclusive.

I'm excited to have Peter back on the Podcast for a second time. We not only dive into the sales pitch being served up to us about autonomous vehicles and a utopian world of car dependency, but we talk about the real-life pragmatic solutions that we should be focusing on such as a sustainable safety approach to mobility network design and the example provided in The Netherlands in the Dutch cycle path and transit network integration. And specifically the power of mobility choice.

I hope you enjoy it.

Helpful Links:

Video version of this episode

Landing page for this episode - for access to photos featured in the video version

Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving published by Island Press

Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City published by MIT Press

How did the Dutch get their cycle paths video by BicycleDutch

The Best Country in the World for Driving - The Netherlands a video by Not Just Bikes

My first podcast episode with Peter - Highlighting the Fighting Traffic book

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Credits:

All video and audio production by John Simmerman

Music:

Various mixes also by John Simmerman

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Background:

Hi Everyone, my name is John Simmerman.

I’m a health promotion professional with over 30 years of experience and my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization of how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.

In 2012 I launched the non-profit Advocates for Healthy Communities as an effort to help promote and create healthy, active places.

Since that time, I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be, in order to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."

My Active Towns suite of channels feature my original video and audio content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.

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Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2022

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