Why We Drive

Driving requires some of our most important abilities and liberties. We share the road but decide for ourselves which way to go. We are bound by laws but free to exercise our skill and judgement. We take risks and responsibility, and trust others to do the same. Forced to put other cares aside and attend to the here and now, many of us take great pleasure from it. Who doesn’t get a certain thrill from the open road? And yet automation and driverless technologies are set to relieve us of this apparent burden, providing us with more screen-time. All in the name of safety, convenience and progress, of course. Drawing on reportage, science, philosophy and memoir, Matthew Crawford exposes the colonisation of our lives by invisible bureaucracy and surveillance technology, and speaks up for the endangered values of rivalry and play, solidarity and dissent, democracy and joy.