The auto industry is promising that high tech-driving will deliver us from crashes, congestion and carbon emissions. Today the panacea is autonomous vehicles, but this vision is the latest in a long history of illusory futuramas that the auto industry has invented to get more people to drive cars.
On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Peter Norton, whose new book Autonorama, the Illusory Promise of High Tech Driving, explores how promoting these high tech solutions distracts us from investing in the affordable, inclusive, healthful and sustainable transportation technologies that we already have.
Peter Norton is an associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. He has authored many articles, book chapters and the books Autonorama, the Illusory Promise of High Tech Driving and Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.
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