{"id":394,"date":"2022-08-31T08:30:23","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T08:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinfell.ca\/?p=394"},"modified":"2023-10-12T09:16:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T09:16:32","slug":"how-car-culture-colonised-our-thinking-and-our-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kevinfell.ca\/index.php\/2022\/08\/31\/how-car-culture-colonised-our-thinking-and-our-language\/","title":{"rendered":"How car culture colonised our thinking \u2013 and our language"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When we block traffic from a street, like for a sports event or a street party, we say that the street is \u201cclosed\u201d. But who is it closed for? For motorists. But really, that street is now open to people.<\/p>\n

We say this because we\u2019ve become accustomed to thinking about the street in \u201ctraffic logic\u201d. For centuries, streets used to be a place with a multiplicity of purposes: talk, trade, play, work and moving around. It\u2019s only in the past century that it has become a space for traffic to drive through as quickly and efficiently as possible. This idea is so pervasive that it has colonised our thinking.<\/p>\n

I first learned about this from Roland Kager<\/a>, a data analyst and multimodal transport researcher \u2013 meaning he\u2019s interested in traffic, but not in cars. Car logic permeates the language we use, says Kager. \u201cWe speak of vulnerable road users, but they\u2019ve only been vulnerable since the advent of fast traffic with big, heavy vehicles. Why don\u2019t we call those fast, heavy vehicles dangerous <\/em>road users?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why are roads you can\u2019t live next to, cycle on, or walk along called main roads? Why do we speak of \u201csegregated\u201d or \u201cseparate\u201d cycle paths, when it\u2019s actually motorists who\u2019ve been given a separate space of their own? The language of traffic instils a \u201cwindscreen view\u201d of the world, as the Belgian mobility expert Kris Peeters wrote a good 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

Kager thinks traffic language stops us really seeing what\u2019s happening in our streets. \u201cWhy do we talk about traffic accidents? As if the one cyclist who runs down and kills a pedestrian \u2013 which hardly ever happens \u2013 were part of the same system that kills people day in, day out, which nearly always involves cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the news, you\u2019ll hear that dense fog has disrupted \u201ctraffic\u201d. That \u201ctraffic\u201d is at a standstill. That there are \u201ctraffic\u201d delays in the wake of a crash. That \u201ctraffic\u201d is gradually returning to normal after such incidents. What traffic means in these instances is cars. But it sounds as if it means all of us.<\/p>\n

According to Kager, the way we talk about traffic makes cars far more important in our perception than they really are in the Dutch context. \u201cOnly 15% of Dutch people are caught up in traffic jams each week, and only 5% of the population say it\u2019s a problem that affects them personally. But because we all want a functional traffic system, 35% say they see this as a social problem anyway. So, one in every three people thinks traffic congestion is a problem that affects other people, even though those other people are a tiny minority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kager says that many of the non-car phenomena he encounters and researches in his work have no names \u2013 there\u2019s just no conceptual framework for certain things. No categories. That makes it harder to make them visible in reports and advisory papers for government \u2013 which means they get less attention and less funding.<\/p>\n

For example, in the Netherlands, nearly half of train passengers go to the station by bike or continue their journey by bike. Kager calls them \u201ctrain cyclists\u201d, and despite their high numbers, they are not included as an official category in mobility surveys. One reason so many trips are made by bike in the Netherlands is that bikes are so useful to get to trains. And Dutch trains are used as intensively as they are because so many people cycle. Dutch Railways have been taken aback by the popularity of public transport bikes. These continue to break new rental records each year. Yet the Dutch travel planning website only recently adopted door-to-door itineraries that include bikes, and still with very basic functionality.<\/p>\n

Fascinated by this discussion with Kager, Thalia wrote an article introducing the concept of train cyclists, and we saw how new words can change reality. The Flemish MP Dirk de Kort read the article, and reached out for more information. Thalia put him in touch with Kager, and they shared Dutch and Flemish statistics and experiences. After this, De Kort incorporated \u201ctrain cyclists\u201d into his political vocabulary. He even came up with another variant: \u201cbus cyclists\u201d. Half a year later, De Kort backed an expansion of a scheme in Flanders to support train and bus cyclists, to which a further \u20ac1m (\u00a3860,000) was allocated.<\/p>\n

Kager made an invisible group of travellers visible and gave them a name. Now they constitute an official category, and policies taking them into account are being actively developed.<\/p>\n

Kager continues to play around with new categories. What if you were to divide motorists into four groups: the quarter who drive most often, the quarter who drive least often, and the two groups in between? He\u2019s studied this new categorisation in Eindhoven: \u201cWhat you see is that the 25% who use cars most are responsible for two-thirds of motor traffic in the city. So now we can have a meaningful discussion: should the local authority be making things easier for them? Or doing more for the other 75% who use cars less often or very little, and taking more account of their wishes in decisions affecting the city?\u201d<\/p>\n

Picture a situation where one-quarter of the people living in a street produce two-thirds of all the rubbish in the recycling containers, so the containers are always overflowing. Should the local authority provide more containers? Employ more bin collectors? Or do something quite different? What kind of town do you want?<\/p>\n