This Twitter thread by James Lindsay pushes the logic of Critical Race Theory (and any other critical theory) into a new subject matter. The point is that critical theories are a dime-a-dozen, easy to create and abuse. Well worth a read.
James Lindsay Presents: Critical Car Theory
Actually I know of an instance similar to what you proposed. A construction company was working on road. They set out orange cones at all the road crossings to control traffic. At one intersection a truck stopped and a jogger came along side of the truck. The drive indicated the road was safe to cross and the jogger went forward and got hit and seriously injured. The construction company was sued (deep pockets), The company pointed out they had followed all laws and guidelines and it wasn’t their staff that told the man it was safe to cross the road. The judge called all parties into his chambers and said “Take out your checkbooks”.
Critical Car Theory
Car safety, handling, and experience is a social construct. It is not a product of individual bias (“God, I hate Smart Cars, especially the electric ones”), prejudice (“What’s the difference between a porcupine and a BMW? In a BMW, the pricks are on the inside.”), or choice (“I chainsawed in my own moon roof because it looks cool.”). It is a concrete belief about, and investment in, car safety and performance-handling that is embedded in legal, social, and policy-making systems.
Critical Car Theory (CCT) is a verb. It wants to control. It wants to dictate. CCT is not about driver “education” or court-ordered “remedial training” but a practice of defining the perceptions, roles, and positions in society of cars and the people who drive them. CCT practices have even spread to other fields of scholarship. Some good examples include epidemiology (READ: COVID), hamburgers (impossible, right?), and take-out coffee.
CCT is an evolving, malleable application. It pushes ideas of how the social construction of cars and driving perpetuates an experiential caste system that relegates freedom-loving people to the bottom tiers of just trying to impress chicks. CCT also recognizes that car-ism intersects with other identities, including gender and age (women drivers, old men wearing hats).
CCT recognizes that car-ism is not a bygone relic of the past. There was purposeful pride in Ralph Nader’s “righteous” battle against the Ford Pinto. CCT believes that this legacy of safety regulations, which have forced second-class citizenship on people of self-determination, must continue to permeate and weave itself into the social fabric of this nation. IT. MUST. BE.
The theories, principles, and practices of CCT hide the ways that car-ism and its progress are cloaked in terminology like “luxury design”, “aerodynamic” “precision engineering”, “off-road”, and “automotive packages”. CCT enhances the ways in which cars and car-ism can both implicitly and explicitly manipulate ideas of personal freedom, social class, public radio, and traffic flow.
CCT understands that crash-car tests do not demonstrate “independent research” and “scientific advancement” but instead ignore the basic purpose of cars: coolness. Such testing strictly adheres to existing car-ist principles by wrapping its choking shards of condescension in the advertising of frivolities like “lane-departure” and “back-up” warning systems.
I loved my grandpa’s Pinto. From the day he bought it to the day it exploded, I watched with pride as he would manually roll down the window of that faded green 1970 beater and give the finger to every Cadillac and Lincoln that drove by. If my grandpa were alive today, he’d be rolling in his grave over the trash that calls itself the American Dream (now housed in the Dezerland Park Car Museum in Orlando). I can almost hear him hollering and pounding his fists.
No. Give me back my carburetor, my push-button AM/FM radio, and seatbelts folded under the bench seats. I’ll pump my own brakes, thank you very much. I want to hear that 450-cubic inch engine roar as it hauls its 2 tons of genuine Pittsburgh steel down Main Street, blowing fumes out its ass like a rocket out of Hell. Now that’s a real engine, not some sound actor whining about being stuck on the engine firewall.