MixedThe Guardian (UK)The book contains some terrific moments, but its big and important argument is muddied by the author’s prejudices ... The book’s middle is like being taken for a drive by a hyperactive, unreliable uncle. You’re going a way you don’t recognise and you’ve been told not to put on your seatbelt because seatbelts are for squares. As you cling to the sides of your seat, he takes you past a stock car rally, then an off-road race course in the desert. Just as you’re approaching something familiar, there’s a handbrake turn and off you go down a detour on the Nazis, a bit on utilitarianism, then a lesson on how to drift ... He is selective in his nostalgia and romanticises bits of the present that other freedom-loving individuals would object to. In his view, it’s fine to destroy speed cameras, but it’s not fine for grown-ups to ride bicycles ... We can be legitimately horrified that more than a million people a year die on the world’s roads, while being also surprised that most of us, most of the time, do not get into danger ... Car culture, as with many traditions invoked by conservatives, is a relatively recent invention, propped up by powerful industrial interests. Arguments against the claims of new technologies need not be as reactionary as Crawford’s. In the space between a souped-up vintage Beetle and a speculative self-driving Uber, we can imagine a range of progressive possibilities. Nostalgia may not be a good guide.
