With its stark and beautifully hand-drawn images of roads, traffic symbols, cities and highways, Crash Course [published in the UK as Rumble Strip by Myriad Editions] takes aim at the ways in which cars have shaped the built environment, politics, and even the human psyche, largely for the worse.
Crash Course unpacks the term “road rage,” explains why traffic accidents are anything but, and dispels the notion that people can be neatly separated into categories such as motorist, cyclist or pedestrian. It also examines the dangers of SUVs, the perils of driverless cars and the recent and growing trend of vehicles being used as weapons against demonstrators in places such as Charlottesville, Virginia.
In this episode of podcast The War on Cars, Woodrow Phoenix talks to Doug Gordon about the unique combination of artistry and journalism that makes Crash Course an effective polemic, one that will hopefully persuade people to think carefully about their responsibility when they get behind the wheel of a car.