Review of “Rules of the Road: The Automobile and the Transformation of American Criminal Justice”

Extract

Over the course of the twentieth century, Spencer Headworth points out in this valuable book, the United States developed into a “uniquely automobile-dependant” society and “the world’s foremost car culture”. In 1910, there were 500,000 cars in the United States, a figure that had risen to 18 million by 1935 and 290 million by 2020. A total of 91% of US households have access to a car; 60% access to two cars. A total of 75% of Americans get to work by driving alone; the average American drives 39 miles per day. The average American household spends 17% of its budget on transportation (Knowles 2023: 5). For the most part, auto-dominance is not understood as dependence, but as freedom. Cars are ideologically and commercially promoted by oil producers and auto-manufacturers, and commonly experienced by their users, as vehicles of personal sovereignty, cultural expression, and social status. Yet they are also one of the most criminogenic and harmful devices ever invented.