On car-brain and respect

There are two very different types of respect; respect for a person as a human being, and respect for a person as an authority. But because we use the same word for these two different things, people often talk as if they were the same thing. So for example, when someone in authority says “If you don’t respect me, I won’t respect you.” What they’re actually saying (and justifying) is “If you don’t respect me as an authority, I won’t respect you as a human being.”

-Heather von Stackelberg, "Mugging the Muse", Medium, Oct 24, 2017

This came to mind when I was thinking about motonormativity. Auto-centric design and motor-normity is when the car says: "If you don't respect me as an authority, I won't respect you as a human being". When a car kills a pedestrian, people shrug and say: "must have been in the wrong place, or in the right place at the wrong time". Automobiles have no respect for anything that isn't an automobile. And that's the root of the enormous driver hostility toward bike lanes (especially protected ones) -- it's not just a denial of authority, but one backed up with consequences - enough reinforced concrete to damage a car. The use of flex posts and swale curbs rather than bollards and parking curbs is emblematic. It's nominally pedestrian-oriented design that does too little to challenge automotive authority. It's certainly better than nothing - like a crosswalk or a bike lane, it at least makes a claim that something other than a car has a right to the right of way. But data on sharrows (worthless, more dangerous than nothing) makes clear how much that is worth.