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Cycling, Environment, Language, Life and style, Science, Transport policy - August 31, 2022

How car culture colonised our thinking – and our language

We have become used to thinking about things from a driver’s perspective – but is that the sort of world we want?

When we block traffic from a street, like for a sports event or a street party, we say that the street is “closed”. But who is it closed for? For motorists. But really, that street is now open to people.

We say this because we’ve become accustomed to thinking about the street in “traffic logic”. For centuries, streets used to be a place with a multiplicity of purposes: talk, trade, play, work and moving around. It’s 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.

This is an edited extract from Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet, translated by Fiona Graham

Should cyclists be licensed and insured?

Labour peer Robert Winston has asked about regulating cyclists. An imagined transport minister responds

On Monday, the scientist and Labour peer Robert Winston is to formally ask a question in the House of Lords about what assessments ministers have made “for requiring adults riding bicycles in city centres to have a licence and third-party insurance”.

Below is the entirely imagined response I would like the government to make to him.

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How car culture colonised our thinking – and our language

Should cyclists be licensed and insured?

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