Do you have motonormativity?

I’ve been trying to change my language away from car-centric metaphors for a while. I try not to say, “Take the road less travelled,” for example, and switch it to “path.” When I talk about putting an idea aside to think about or discuss later I’ve started saying, “we’ll put that in the bike rack for a bit” rather than “parking lot.” I also try to say things like active transport rather than alternative transport when referring to things like commuting by bike or walking. I’ve been doing this because I noticed how many of our phrases are based on the idea that the car is normal and everything else is somehow relative to the car. This relates to motonormativity.

“Motornormativity is a shared bias whereby people judge motorised mobility differently to other comparable topics” (Walker & Brömmelstroet, 2025, p. 1). Even if you aren’t a driver yourself, the social, physical, and cultural environments you live in make driving and cars the norm. One of the consequences is that if you support non-car transport, you will probably think you are in the minority. This can potentially prevent people from speaking up or supporting non-car transport options and spending. But, Walker and Brömmelstroet’s (2025) research indicates that more than 60% of people in the UK, the US, and the Netherlands thought they were more supportive of non-car transport than others. Let’s think about this, if a majority of people think that they are more supportive of non-car transport than others, they think that they are the minority but, in reality, are part of the majority.

This doesn’t really surprise me. Yes, I don’t have a representative sample, but I see all the time when the students in my sustainability classes share common viewpoints, viewpoints that I have been able to read books about and find represented frequently in studies. But they all believe that they are the minority. It is much harder to speak up when you think you’re in the minority. In the world of motonormativity, we hear from the people who put cars first and don’t support non-car transport. They believe they are the majority, so they feel comfortable speaking up. This reinforces the view that the non-car supporters are in the minority because we don’t hear from them. Therefore, they become confident in their silence.

Clearly, this is problematic. It affects consultation procedures and potentially even the planning and infrastructure staff themselves: “I’d like to propose a different approach to transportation in this area, but I know that nobody will support it.” I have gone to community consultations on bike infrastructure. It’s hard not to feel like you’re an imposition with all the structures around it. But this is your sign that more people may be like you than you think. We need to get better at being heard because the more we are heard, the more people will believe they can be heard.