Motonormativity

Motonormativity, also called motornormativity, windshield bias, car blindness, or, in its more critical form, car brain, is an unconscious cognitive bias in which the social norms surrounding private car ownership and use, along with their broader effects on society, are treated as natural, universal, inevitable, neutral and beyond question. It is a form of normativity built on the assumption that cars occupy a taken for granted role in society, and the bias operates throughout car centric societies generally rather than being confined to people who drive: people who do not drive can hold it too, even though they are often among those most affected by it, including people who cannot drive because of their age or a disability. The concept describes how dependence on cars is created and reinforced over time, how the health hazards cars produce are downplayed or obscured, and how a form of social privilege becomes attached to being a motorist, along with the double standards that follow from it.