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 safe-driving shorts. Advertising agencies were urged to apply their expertise in "creating desire" for the crusade. Outdoor advertising was "the medium that reaches the motorist at the most important time-when he is at the wheel." They were told to "sell traffic-safety messages ... keyed to current causes of traffic accidents ... [to] hammer home the basic theme." Magazines should target "Mr. and Mrs. John Doe" because the "magazine is able to present a more varied, more comprehensive, and more contemplative safety 'sell' than any other medium. Editors have long realized this and have for many years been pushing traffic safety." Their new task was to emphasize success stories and build contacts with existing safety groups in their quest for "facts." Trade journals were to focus on the most specific safety issues of their industry. Trucking and busing firms were given special attention. Last, media trade associations were charged with forging a network for spreading stories and with the creation of outstanding safety awards in the workplace. All of this public relations work was ultimately to "teach Americans everywhere to do things for themselves" when it came to safety, just as the crusade claimed they were learning do-it-yourself home improvement. In fact, "our tool chest is stocked with sound police policies, recognized systems of traffic education, accepted principles of engineering, model laws and proved methods of inspiring public support." The media men and the public at large were said to depend too often on "the official to fight the battle alone." But now, "it is time to Do It Ourselves." One well-traveled advertisement from America Fore Insurance Group provides an example of how advertisers and insurance companies played a part in the campaign. The ad ends with this call: "Yes-safety on our highways is everybody's responsibility! Join the Crusade for Traffic Safety and save a life-maybe your own!"

The crusade is a particularly useful starting point for my analysis because it directs attention to key conceptual issues present throughout the following chapters. Reorganizing public opinion is an act of producing a new popular truth and in this case through a form of problematization. By this I mean that a phenomenon becomes recognized as a serious public problem through publicity that identifies it as such and suggests it be dealt with through expert explanation. In essence, it becomes a popular truth insofar as it creates a sense that reality is adequately represented, that something is amiss and must be set right, and, most generally, that there is some form of expertise that can sufficiently come to grips with the situation. Furthermore, in this instance it was recognized that numerous institutions and organizations must work together to study the problem and orchestrate the crusade. This does not suggest that this specific crusade led to direct changes in behavior owing to its effect on the minds of American citizens. However, it does trace many of the cultural manifestations of this popular truth about automobile safety. The Crusade for Traffic Safety was the focusing, unifying, and publicizing culmination of a preexistent discourse about traffic safety. It was a discourse promoted, spoken, and, to some degree, created by numerous types of experts, including, though not limited to, economists, social and physical scientists, governmental bureaucrats, industrial managers, insurance actuaries, urban planners, and media specialists. The crusade's existence makes clear that these media and government initiatives were imagined to be not only useful, but necessary. It is similar in nature and form to the media's earlier involvement in the war effort. The formation of such a campaign sets the stage for governmental and nongovernmental intervention in ways that are directly and indirectly involved in altering not just minds, but conduct. As will become apparent throughout this book, it begins in nascent form what will, over the next fifty years, become an increasingly neoliberal approach to traffic safety, ultimately arguing for a personal responsibility approach. The pledge itself involves recognition that one is joining the crusade first and foremost to protect his or her own life. The appeal to save the lives of others is secondary. Thus, the crusade ultimately orients itself around personal investment and responsibility through an appeal to the immediate danger posed to the self, as the motivation for joining is said to be a desire to "protect my life." Its emergence in 1954 is important, as it is (1) the culmination of a type of media representation that had been treating traffic safety as dramatic and serious, and (2) it helped shape the media's representation of safety in the following years. This is not to say all media representation that followed toed the party line (though clearly most did), nor is it to say that what followed was vastly different from what had come before (it certainly wasn't). Rather, the crusade represents a unification in form and focus of investments, practices, and goals between government and media regarding traffic safety. By 1954 this unified strategy was said by the Advertising Council to be working, and it claimed victory for reducing traffic fatalities for the first time since World War II.

The crusade treated traffic safety as a problem of national scale and one having great political significance. Eisenhower noted that, like all problems facing "free men" "in a democracy," this one could be solved through their investment in organizing public opinion. Much like the victory in World War II that propelled him into office, this problem "could be solved," this victory could be won. It was treated as a front-line battle. The pamphlet itself provides a graph of all the highway deaths in America since the war, implying that a war mentality was needed to defeat the next enemy, traffic fatalities. Previous casualties had been soldiers, whereas the new American casualties were "friends, relatives, the neighbor next door." This appeal to one's neighbor offers insight into the kind of person with whom one felt this sense of camaraderie. When it came to traffic safety in the 1950s, it was the idealized imaginary suburb and the neighbors who populated it that served as the benchmark against which all others were to be compared. The media representations of this suburban never-never land were filled with a typological array of malady-laden drivers who were the main culprits against whom the crusade would be aimed. Gender, age, and psychological makeup were the three variables through which these typologies were animated. It is not coincidental that the wide-scale acceptance of psychology, social concern with delinquent youth, and suburban-altered gender expectations over this period played vital roles in how the safety war would be fought and justified. As will be the case in the following chapters, I begin with a set of populations whose problematic mobility helped to justify and orient the crusade. In this case, I begin with the menace of the woman driver.

Make Room for the Woman Driver

The Woman's Home Companion for February 1954 announced the beginning of a new editorial department in the magazine, the House, Garden, and Automobile Workshop, which featured articles intended to "help you [the reader] make better use of your cars." The very first article, "America Discovers the Station Wagon," detailed "the newest development in our mobile living: the discovery of the station wagon as a family car." The increased focus on automobiles was by no means unique to the Woman's Home Companion among the plethora of women's magazines of the time. For example, Good Housekeeping ran a short weekly feature on women and automobiles, and Better Homes and Gardens featured stories explicitly about automobiles and driving in more than half of their issues from 1953 to 1957. Magazines such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, and Independent Woman also featured their fair share of articles treating the anxiety and excitement surrounding the automobile. This upsurge in coverage corresponded to the sharp increase in women who were driving and families that were moving to the suburbs. Automobiles had been a significant part of life for men and women alike for over forty years. However, with the advent of the suburb and the new ideals it represented, the automobile took a more central role in structuring women's lives. Furthermore, by the mid-fifties, the potential for and the dream of the two-car-family began to take hold. Automobiles thus came to be at the center of women's daily routines. But things were not all rosy. Discourse regarding the introduction of new technologies into everyday lives is often framed by utopian and dystopian logics. On the one hand, there was great excitement surrounding the benefits this new convenience would bring, yet there was also great anxiety regarding how the new technology would alter the stability, patterns, and expectations of everyday life. To further complicate issues, the automobile's introduction into the everyday lives of women came about along with other radical changes, including altered work expectations, new family ideals, expansion of leisure, and movement away from traditional neighborhoods. As Kathleen HcHugh put it, "Automobility threatened nineteenth-century America's preeminent gender distinction-men move and women stay home-the needs of the economy demanded a more mobile female consumer." These changes were intricately linked and in many ways they overlapped and built upon one another to create an idealized version of women's "new mobile lives." As John Hartley makes clear, these lives were dependent upon a confluence of technologies that reorganized domestic labor and expectations. For instance, the refrigerator, a banal and overlooked technology, made possible and practical suburban housing and the new forms of domestic consumption which were replacing domestic production, as food could be stored for lengthy periods of time. The weekly shopping commute to the grocery store replaced the daily walk to local grocers, bakeries, and meat markets. Whereas women's ability to successfully "use the fridge," or the stove for that matter, was not seen as problematic, when it came to the automobile essentialist notions regarding her inability to properly use technology and her supposedly inherent flighty nature made her a potential traffic safety threat.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from MOBILITY WITHOUT MAYHEMby JEREMY PACKER Copyright © 2008 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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