Car Brain

Car brain is a popular, pejorative name for motonormativity, also called motornormativity, windshield bias or car blindness, an unconscious cognitive bias in which private car ownership and use, along with the broader societal effects and costs that come with them, are assumed to be natural, universal, inevitable and beyond question. The bias is described as systemic, shaping the outlook of an entire car-centric society rather than only its drivers, and it disproportionately affects people who cannot drive because of age or disability, since it can downplay the health hazards that widespread vehicle use creates and normalize the social advantages and double standards that favor drivers over other road users. The psychologist Ian Walker of Swansea University, together with Alan Tapp and Adrian Davis of the University of the West of England, coined the term motonormativity through a 2023 study in the United Kingdom, and the researcher Tara Goddard replicated the finding in the United States in a 2024 study; the journalist Paul Salopek separately and independently coined the term car brain while retracing ancient human migration routes on foot, to describe the mental distance he observed cars creating between drivers and their surroundings.