Hundreds of thousands of Americans lose a loved one in a car crash every single year. So why don't more of us talk about it — and why don't more of us take action to prevent other families from enduring those tragedies, too? On this special episode of The Brake, host Kea Wilson has an emotional conversation with advocate Dan Langenkamp about the people they've each recently lost to traffic violence, and what it means to mourn through advocacy.  Dan's wife, Sarah, was a celebrated diplomat to Ukraine and a mother of two young sons before she was killed by a right-turning truck driver as she biked home from her children's new elementary school on August 25. Now, Dan is gathering cyclists from around the country to retrace Sarah's route and ride all the way to Congress to demand safer streets, vehicles, and systems — and he wants you to take part.  Register for the Ride for Your Life, support the Langenkamp family's ongoing fundraising efforts for bicycle safety organizations, and learn more the life and legacy of Sarah Langenkamp. 

In communities across America, people are getting angry about traffic violence. But what does it take to turn that anger to a full-blown movement, with neighbors fighting alongside one another to change the status quo?  Today, we tapped Elizabeth Creely of the San Francisco-based grassroots advocacy organization Safe Street Rebel, which has been making good trouble to change the transportation status quo since 2020. Along the way, they've done pop-up traffic calming on the sites of recent crash deaths, put up people-protected bike lanes where the city wouldn’t build ones out of concrete, and gained some critical wisdom on how to not just create, but sustain and grow a movement to end car dependency, even when they don’t win every battle.

Learn more about Safe Street Rebel on their website.

Epidemiologists around the world have sounded the alarm about the health risks of rising noise pollution, and called out cars as one of the largest sources of the crisis. In our quest to make cities quieter, though, noise researcher Dr. Erica Walker says we're missing a critical conversation about how unique communities experience their local soundscapes, both in the streets and beyond — and who we harm when we police decibel levels without listening to marginalized people first.  In this episode of The Brake, we sit down with Dr. Walker to explore not just why ultra-quiet electric cars won't actually turn down the volume on our neighborhoods much, but who gets to decide what our cities should sound like, how we enforce arbitrary auditory standards, and why a peaceful, walkable street is often the opposite of silent.  Learn more about Dr. Erica Walker and the Community Noise Lab here.

Europe is on the brink of putting "Intelligent Speed Assist" technology on all new cars to slow drivers down to local limits — and even some U.S. states are hoping to follow suit. But the minute "speed governors" get mentioned, tempers flare, and it could make the movement to throttle U.S. drivers a challenging fight to win.  Today on The Brake, we asked mobility researcher David Zipper to give us a breakdown of the most common speed-limiting technologies available today, and to share how he responds to six of the most common concerns about them — from the valid to the downright silly.  Read more of David's past writings on this topic here and here, and check out the highlights of our conversation on usa.streetsblog.org.

Free transit pilots are popping up around the world — and so are heated debates about whether they will stymie agencies' efforts to delivery the high-quality service that U.S. riders need. But what if that argument is missing something fundamental about why we commodify basic mobility in the first place, and the many ways marginalized people are impacted when they can't afford a fare?  Today on The Brake, we sit down with Dr. Destiny Thomas to unpack some of the most common arguments against fare-free transit and talk about what our transportation system might look like if we treated mobility as a human right — and why only giving some people a free ride isn't enough.  Listen in, and learn more about the Thrivance Group, their past collaborations with Streetsblog, and the conviction of Raquel Nelson, which was referenced in the episode. 

Last time on the Brake, we chatted with authors Robert Braun and Richard Randell about why automobility isn't really about cars at all — and how it's beocme what they call a "totalitarian system" that touches virtually every part of our lives.  Today, we bring you part two of that conversation, and dive into the difficult question of what a world beyond automobility might look like — and how on Earth we might get there. Would it be good enough to just make automobility less destructive by equipping cars with batteries and automated driving features? How different would our world look if the evidence of automobility's violence wasn't immediately hidden from the public eye? And could the tobacco industry serve as an example for regulating not just the car itself, but the culture that surrounds it?   Listen up, and check out Post Automobility Futures today.

Car culture is all around us. But is it really just about vehicles, roads, motorists and violent commercials on TV, or is it is a political system as deeply entrenched in cultures around the world as our governments, economic systems, and structures of oppression?  On this episode of the The Brake, we sat down with authors Robert Braun and Richard Randell to talk about their book Post Automobility Futures, and how our collective obsession with speed, efficiency, and ruthless technological progress has transformed the way we define what public space is for and what forms of violence we find acceptable.  And they argue that this obsession began long before the automobile — and that getting beyond it will require dismantling a value system that is becoming more and more deep set, even as the car as we know it evolves.  This is part one of a two-part conversation; check back in two weeks for the second installment. And in the meantime, check out our earlier conversation with Braun and Randell about their work. 

Even as gas prices hit historic highs, many Americans aren't driving any less — because so many of their communities are so car-dependent, they don't really have a choice. But what about people who could skip the pump but don't, simply because they're in the habit of driving everywhere they go?   On this episode of The Brake, host Kea Wilson sits down with environmental psychology expert Dr. Ian Walker to talk about why conventional strategies to disincentivize driving don't always work, and why even incentivizing other modes can't always tempt people onto buses, trains, bikes and sidewalks. And then we explore what it will really take to shift Americans' deeply-ingrained travel routines — and why every policymaker needs to understand the irrational, emotional, and deeply human reasons we make our travel choices. Give it a listen, and check out Dr. Walker's website and the Twitter thread that inspired the episode here. 

Planning and engineering students are poised to play a major role in shaping America's transportation system for decades to come. But do either of them agree with sustainable transportation advocates about what that future should look like — or even with each other? 

Today on The Brake, host Kea Wilson spoke with researchers Kelcie Ralph and Nick Klein, who conducted a new survey on how well these two groups of future built environment professionals understand fundamental concepts like "induced demand," as well as their opinions on the fundamental importance of reducing driving. Then, we dug into what it will take to get both disciplines and the public on the same page as transportation reformers — and why no one shouldn't take it for granted that doing it will be easy. 

Countless communities across America say they're planning for a future where more residents walk, bike, and roll to get around. So why do transportation leaders spend so much time drafting "pedestrian master plans" and "bike master plans" without accompanying "car master plans" aimed at building a world where fewer people get behind the wheel? 

Today on The Brake, we're joined by urban planner, community organizer and all around rad person Cathy Tuttle, who actually sat down and wrote a car master plan for her own city of Portland, Oregon. And she hopes that advocates and transportation leaders in other communities will follow her lead — because if they don't, she argues, we'll never truly reckon with the impact of car dependency on our communities, much less chart an effective strategy to dismantle it.