Abstract Summary
This scientific paper is about an urban ‘development’ that sparked one of the greatest threats to life: automobility. Motor vehicle crashes have killed more people than World War II (Braun & Randell, 2022), resulting not only from the car itself but also from the social and physical reconstruction of streets into spaces for speed and efficiency rather than messy human living (Norton, 2008). While 1970’s activism gained the Netherlands a safer infrastructure, here traffic kills hundreds of people each year and the numbers have increased. Critical mobility scholars have argued that ways of thinking about this ‘vehicular violence’ (Culver, 2018) keep it from being properly addressed by city planners. Over time, public perception of traffic deaths has shifted from a heartbreaking and unacceptable result of the invention of automobility to unremarkable ‘accidents’. Even Dutch policy now predominantly places responsibility for safety on people who are not in cars, who are the most likely victims. Meanwhile, the perceptions of another group of actors have not yet been studied: the people impacted by traffic crashes themselves. Survivors regularly participate in public debate, where their stories have a ‘moral authority that no one can deny’ (Bateson, 2022: 2) and a strong influence on public perception (Newman, 2003). Therefore, this paper analyzes how survivors and deceased victims’ relatives in the Dutch context narrate their lived experiences with traffic crashes. In in-depth interviews, they echo existing narratives of individual responsibility, resist them with narratives of societal responsibility, and invent new narratives that absolve all from blame and that rehumanize, showing deceased victims’ individuality and meaning to their communities and the ongoing impact on survivors’ lives. While earlier studies expose the automobile industry as an important factor shaping the macro level narratives of media and policy, this paper newly explores how meaning-making after trauma leads survivors to both reproduce and resist those narratives. Thereby, the study contributes to a diverse understanding of the public perceptions that ultimately shape (im)mobility thinking and planning, and it allows advocates of counter-narratives to consider the complexities and sensitivities of survivors’ lived experiences in order to minimize re-traumatizing. Accepting that the perfect narrative does not exist, the paper proposes to increase awareness among all actors who disseminate narratives of traffic crashes rather than offer one solution – in other words, to face both ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’. Presenting this study, I will use slides to outline the societal and theoretical context, a brief note on methodology, the results illustrated with quotes from interviews, and lessons for research and practice. Afterwards, I would like to welcome input from the audience about whether and how they see these narratives changing in current policymaking.
