Why We Drive: On Freedom, Risk and Taking Back Control

In an age when we are encouraged to let go of practical skills and rely on automatic systems, this book intelligently promotes learning to do things for ourselves, in the process expressing our individuality. Take some risks and have some fun!

This is a quick paced and engaging book that has an important message. If we continue to infanticise ourselves with ever more limiting 'safety' rules, we will regress and loose important skills. It is a refreshing antidote to those who worship the 'precautionary principle'. After all, life is for living, not simply existing.

In this book, there are plenty of quotable quotes that car-haters would do well to note Here are just a few examples;“There is a certain risk that is inherent in moving around by whatever means. A responsible person does everything to minimise that risk.”“Those who invoice safety enjoy a nearly non-rebuttable presumption of public-spiritedness, so a stated concern for safety becomes a curtain behind which various entities can collect rents from perfectly reasonable behaviour.”“Properly interpreting quantitative data is a more nuanced undertaking than most of us are prepared to undertake.”Matthew Crawford is an American, writing his book from a US perspective, but it is relatable to those who live in other countries. I live in the UK, where cycling groups use statistics every day on social media to “prove” their point that cycling would be perfectly safe if it wasn’t for cars and their drivers, but is very quiet about data from their favourite country, the Netherlands, that shows that roughly half of all fatal and serious accidents involving bicycles in that country do not involve a motorised vehicle. So yes, the analysis of data relating to road accidents is extremely nuanced.It takes some guts to expose the truth behind so-called “road safety” measures that are anything but, and requires the selection of the right examples in the right context. Crawford scores admirably here. He talks about the installation of red-light cameras at 70 junctions in Chicago where the incidence of red-light jumping had been historically very low. The result? No reduction in the very few cases of red-light jumping and a massive increase in rear-end collisions caused by drivers slamming on the brakes at an amber light to avoid a ticket. But every accident is a potential source of fines revenue and, more importantly, an opportunity for “modal shift” from cars to pedal cycles and e-scooters as drivers are forced to abandon their cars due to licence endorsements, fines and increased insurance premiums.Crawford says that increasing the duration of an amber light from 3 to 3 ½ seconds would actually reduce rear-end collisions, but he observes, correctly, that free safety isn’t as appealing as free money. He is also spot-on in observing that the “mechanised judgement” which results in fines being issued automatically if you accidentally stop with a back wheel on the corner of a faded yellow box junction at night, causing obstruction to no-one, puts authority beyond scrutiny. Anyone who has tried to appeal the issue of a ticket in such circumstances can relate to that. In the UK at least, it makes a Ph.D. thesis look like a five-minute job.So why does this book merit only four stars? Its weakness is that it contains too much narrative about the author’s experiences in driving various souped-up cars and some of his advice to those who are stopped by the police (“Never pull over with the first siren-howl”) is questionable. Enjoying motoring is not a crime provided that it is being done safely and legally, but the anti-car lobby is now so powerful that a book that is so up-front about promoting motoring as a form of enjoyment is presentationally flawed in 2022. It risks detracting from the more crucial message that driving is, for millions of us, a necessity. This is something that is being challenged more emotively by the day, with the internet being cluttered with photos of sofas being carried around on obviously dangerous cargo bikes in the expectation that this is the inevitable “New Normal.” The really good points about the politically-motivated mismanagement of vehicular traffic by the authorities take some while to appear in the text due to Crawford’s reminiscences of zooming around Californian freeways in souped-up Chevrolets and VW Beetles.So one demerit point from me, but four stars is still good and I’d recommend it to anyone involved in any form of transport campaign or who works in the traffic management department of a municipal authority.

This has been compared with Zen and the Art BUT I think its full of insights and really NOW. I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who is wondering what we are doing and where we are going . Definitely one of my TOP ten reads .

Superb book. In a world where simply human joy is increasingly a forgotten in product design and politics, the author makes a passionate and thorough argument for the importance of joy and fun and excitement in driving.