Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeremy Packer is Associate Professor of Communication and a faculty member in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media graduate program and the Science, Technology, and Society program at North Carolina State University. He is a coeditor of Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality and Thinking with James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History.

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"Engaging with lively debates in contemporary cultural studies, including critical geography, technological and social history, and popular culture studies, Jeremy Packer denaturalizes the common-sense assumptions that inform our culture's conceptions of drivers and driving."--Jeffrey Sconce, editor of "Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics"

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MOBILITY WITHOUT MAYHEM

Duke University Press

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.........................................................................................viiINTRODUCTION Auto-Mobile America.......................................................................11. THE CRUSADE FOR TRAFFIC SAFETY: Mobilizing the Suburban Dream........................................272. HITCHING THE HIGHWAY TO HELL: Media Hysterics and the Politics of Youth Mobility.....................773. MOTORCYCLE MADNESS: The Insane, Profane, and Newly Tame..............................................1114. COMMUNICATIONS CONVOY: The CB and Truckers...........................................................1615. OF CADILLACS AND "COON CAGES": The Racing of Automobility............................................1896. RAGING WITH A MACHINE: Neoliberalism Meets the Automobile............................................2317. SAFETY TO SECURITY: Future Orientations of Automobility..............................................267NOTES...................................................................................................293WORKS CITED.............................................................................................325INDEX...................................................................................................341

Chapter One

Mobilizing the Suburban Dream

When any particular activity in the United States takes thirty-eight thousand American lives in one year, it becomes a national problem of first importance.... It is one of those problems which by their nature have no easy solution.... [But] in a democracy, public opinion is everything. It is the force that brings about enforcement of laws; it is the force that keeps the united States in being, and it runs in all its parts. So, if we can mobilize public opinion, this problem, like all of those to which free men fall heir, can be solved. PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, 1954

We Americans resist encroachments on our freedom to drive automobiles as we please just as we resent restrictions on our freedom to worship or vote. As a nation we dislike regimentation of any sort. Time and time again we have demonstrated that we will not readily relinquish what we regard as our individual rights unless we are convinced that our doing so is necessary for national welfare. HARRY DESILVA, WHY WE HAVE AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS

Introducing the Crusade for Traffic Safety

The words of President Eisenhower quoted in the epigraph above in no way mark the beginning of public or even governmental concern with traffic safety. In fact, traffic laws, highway engineering manuals, academic research, and federal initiatives had all addressed the issue of traffic safety to some degree starting just a few years after the advent of the automobile. It wasn't until the 1930s, though, that traffic safety became a subject of organized concern from academics and engineers. This made it a professional discourse, one that featured regularities as to its importance and a bifurcation of its aims and goals. On the one hand was a specifically scientific apparatus that focused on engineering safer cars and roads. On the other was a psychological/sociological current that paid particular attention to drivers, their actions, beliefs, tendencies, and psychological makeup. But there was a sense that both the human and the technological had to be taken into account in order to adequately solve the problems posed by automobile traffic. The DeSilva quotation above, taken from a typical traffic safety book of the era (of which there were many), adequately describes the conceptualization of American sentiment that those involved in traffic regulation were operating under. They viewed freedom as an absolute that could only be diminished through regulation. Thus the desire to alter public opinion in order to erode the public's demand for freedom was at the core of their understanding of the problem. Safety was a hindrance to freedom, but, the regulators argued, an increasingly necessary one. Oddly, by comparing the freedom to drive to religious freedom and voting privileges, the author linked driving to inalienable rights and struggles for social equality. To a degree, Americans treat driving as an inalienable right, and most would gladly give up their voter registration card before their driver's license. But it is neither with these exact concerns nor with the 1930s as the beginning of the safety discourse that I begin this chapter. Rather, it is the first decade after World War II that situates my present concerns. Why this particular period? Because it saw not only numerous changes in the cultural landscape which made automobile driving a necessity in the daily lives of new and growing suburban populations, but also the massive expansion of the highway system. This period witnessed the greatest growth in automobile production and consumption in U.S. history. It was a time when the automobile came to be problematized according to experts' evaluations of specific populations, and governmental and nongovernmental measures were created to address them specifically. As Ike's crusade tried to make clear, it was a time for concerted effort on the part of government and various media organizations to change public opinion regarding traffic safety.

The Crusade for Traffic Safety was initiated in 1954 by "media men to help you, a media man, to save lives in traffic." It was, in effect, an attempt by the federal government to organize a concerted effort of media leaders to advocate and spread the gospel of traffic safety. A booklet sent out to every media outlet across the nation outlined the specific ways local media could help in the crusade. The booklet begins by explaining that "traffic safety requires a continuing effort" and that it "will be most effective at the local level." The problem is then compared to the war effort and states that "the basic problem ahead of us now [is]-to make everyone realize that HE and YOU are in the front line of this fight." The "media men" were asked to sign the Crusade for Traffic Safety Pledge, which read, "I personally pledge myself to drive and walk safely and think in terms of safety. I pledge myself to work through my church, civic, business, and labor groups to carry out the official action program for traffic safety. I give this pledge in seriousness and earnestness, having considered fully my obligation to protect my life and the lives of my family and my fellow men." What followed were the specific guidelines for the six media forms deemed necessary to win the crusade.

Daily newspapers were given the tasks of dramatizing coverage of local accidents, pushing the human angle and organizing local safety groups. Weekly newspapers were urged to publish the names of safety offenders, encourage the teaching of safety in schools, push for legislative action, and kick off the program with a "Stay Alive Week." Radio and television stations could "serve no greater need in the public interest than to campaign for highway safety." Specifically, it was suggested they air talks by police, court, hospital, and school officials and insert safety spots into daily programing as well as sponsor safe-driving contests. The moving picture industry was told to produce more locally focused films that dealt with specific regional driving challenges, and theater owners were told to show more...