Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
Using driving as a window through which to view the broader changes wrought by technology on contemporary life, the author investigates the driver's seat as one of the few remaining domains skill, exploration, play -- and freedom.
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Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
Using driving as a window through which to view the broader changes wrought by technology on contemporary life, the author investigates the driver's seat as one of the few remaining domains skill, exploration, play -- and freedom.
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Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
Using driving as a window through which to view the broader changes wrought by technology on contemporary life, the author investigates the driver's seat as one of the few remaining domains skill, exploration, play -- and freedom.
Matthew B. Crawford is the author of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The World Beyond Your Head. He is a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He earned a PhD in Political Philosophy from the University of Chicago, specializing in ancient political thought; he majored in physics as an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara. Crawford has been working on cars since the age of fifteen and currently drives a 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
Table of Contents
Prelude: Without a Road 1
Introduction: Driving as a Humanism 5
Cars and the Common Good 51
Rolling Your Own
Breaking Down: 1972 Jeepster Commando 71
Project Rat Rod 85
Old Cars: A Thorn in the Side of the Future 95
The Diminishing Returns of Idiot-Proofing as a Design Principle 122
Feeling the Road 155
Automation as Moral Reeducation 168
Folk Engineering 185
Motor Sport and the Spirit of Play
The Motor Equivalent of War 233
The Rise of the Bicycle Moralists (A Digression) 256
Two Derbies and a Scramble 263
Act I Demolition Derby 263
Act II Adult Soap Box Derby 267
Act III Hare Scramble 274
Democracy in the Desert: The Caliente 250 285
Self-Government, or Not
Prelude: The DMV Experience 303
"Reckless Driving:" Rules, Reasonableness, and the Flavor of Authority 306
Managing Traffic: Three Rival Versions of Rationality 345
Road Rage, Other Minds, and the Traffic Community 357