A recurrent theme in these blogs (such as) about car-free-dom is a general idea about there being an unquestioned acceptance of the (growing) presence of motorised transport in our lives with a connected bias to not judging motorised transport “objectively and dispassionately”.

I don’t want to not get too language heavy in this blog. But basically the main sense is that it is suggested that many peoples’ taken-for-granted attachment to their vehicles means they view alternatives that are car-free negatively, with the potential for negative emotional responses.

Car-free-dom can be felt as significantly challenging to their car identity and so can inform people feeling a strong need to resist them. In this case I am thinking about some peoples’ reaction to the (potential) creation of cycle lanes to enable everybody to be able to actively, safely and cleanly travel around where they live.

Although it seems that this opposition can be over-hyped as recent research suggested that:

“Protests and headlines may give the impression that cycle lanes are deeply unpopular, but most people – including both drivers and cyclists – support new infrastructure and even traffic restrictions, as long as they are well designed and involve only modest changes. Parking is a sensitive point, but overall support for change is broader than the noise suggests.”

What this implies is that whilst in promoting car-free family living we need to understand how we can face motonormativity, but that the sum of the social media noise is in general support for better infrastructure for car-free-dom. So that’s good to hear!