“The foundation has been laid for fully autonomous,” Elon Musk announced in 2016, when he assured the world that Tesla would have a driverless fleet on the road in 2017. “It’s twice as safe as a human, maybe better.” Promises of technofuturistic driving utopias have been ubiquitous wherever tech companies and carmakers meet.In Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving, technology historian Peter Norton argues that driverless cars cannot be the safe, sustainable...

“This book will—no question—make you think in new ways. Why have we surrendered our cities to cars? What might it be like to inhabit a space designed for people instead? It’s exciting and hopeful—this we can do!”—Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, The Cross, and the Station WagonAlmost everywhere in the world, streets are designed for travel at the highest speed, giving precedence to the chunkiest vehicles. We take for granted that the streets outside of our homes a...