Motonormativity

a.k.a. “Car brain”.

Motonormativity is an unconscious bias that treats private-car use as a normal part of society, leading people to judge the risks and harms of driving more leniently than comparable risks and harms in other contexts. In Walker, Tapp, and Davis’s paired survey questions, changing a statement from smoking or workplace risk to driving sharply changed respondents’ judgments, including among non-drivers. Because the same assumptions shape institutional decisions, motonormativity can also distort transport and public-health policy.

Coined in Ian Walker’s paper Motonormativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard.