At the “Tomorrow’s Transportation” conference, Mathieu Flonneau, a professor and researcher at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, looked back at the history of transportation, particularly that of the private car. In particular, he examined the dynamics at work behind the creation of a full-fledged ecosystem of automotive mobility. As regulations governing our personal vehicles become stricter, Mathieu Flonneau reminds us that the car is also a hard-won achievement of our social struggles.
[The text below is an edited transcript of excerpts from the presentation. The full version can be found at the end of the article or on the Collège de France’s YouTube page .]
“The presentation I am about to give addresses this critical moment we are all experiencing today regarding the history of transportation. We perceive it through paradoxes, perhaps through reflection, through immense tensions, and through a very palpable anxiety—a social anxiety—that likely means even the Collège de France is not immune to this issue. Well, it’s fortunate that this issue isn’t studied solely through the lens of technology. Mobility contradicts the history of transportation. By that I mean that I am not a specialist in automotive technologies. I am a specialist in automotive mobility ecosystems—that is, in the culture of motoring. I’m using the automobile as an example, but I could just as easily choose other elements from the history of transportation to illustrate a narrative that is primarily political, social, sociological, and cultural—and only secondarily technological. Indeed, the question of technical acceptability, in a period of mobility transition such as the one we are currently experiencing, is of paramount importance.
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In the latest issue of the *Revue politique et parlementaire* , I raised the question of the absolute value and relative cost of so-called “archaic” motoring—since we do tend to view it as archaic, after all—in comparison to what we’re promised for the future. And I perceive this as a series of concessions regarding sovereignty, potentially including industrial sovereignty. At the highest levels of the European Commission, people are beginning to question the real implications of what has been decided for 2035 [namely, the end of sales of new internal-combustion-engine vehicles]. They are planning a review clause for 2026. In other words, they’ve already paved the way for the public to accept a revision of this somewhat absolute policy. To put it another way, in the article I mentioned, I raised the question of the misleading narrative of history: why have we reached this level of almost “pathological” dependence on the automobile? Because we’ve largely gone along with it. Because the automobile has provided many answers and solutions for our societies. Jean-Marc Jancovici, a brilliant engineer, says so. Every one of our fellow citizens—and ourselves—lives as if we were in antiquity, with six hundred [mechanical] slaves at our disposal. It’s going to take a lot of hard work to give up this civilization that we’ve so dearly desired—and for which entire generations, particularly the generation of the “Trente Glorieuses” blamed for “all evils,” worked hard to achieve. The reference made earlier by our colleague, economist Marc Ivaldi, is that of the minimum wage (SMIC). The minimum wage is a social achievement, an achievement in social regulation, an achievement in social progress, and an achievement in social redistribution. Are contemporary societies still willing to accept these sacrifices? The misleading narrative of history also lies in the revisionism applied to this history, which aims to deconstruct the story of the Industrial Revolution as one of catastrophes. Yes, a history of catastrophes that has doubled the life expectancy of the average citizen not only in our Western societies but also on a global scale. It is this, of course, that poses a real problem today. There may be a danger today in simply denying the happy place of memory that the triumph of the automobile has been in our societies.
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There has been an entire process of civilization, acclimatization, and the establishment of rules. The automobile has never been left to its own devices; it has never been left unregulated. The whole issue today regarding the incivility of unregulated or “Uberized” traffic in the Paris metropolitan area, in particular, boils down to precisely this: old regulations are labeled archaic, even though they kept the system running when they were followed. This entire normalization of car culture was negotiated and debated with a group of decision-makers who discussed traffic signs and roadside markings. An entire ecosystem was built. It would not have been built by disregarding the people. It was built together with them. That is why, in a city like Paris, there was a negotiation. There was no misleading advertising surrounding the automobile. There was a mutual adaptation between the city and the automobile.
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“No form of brutalism can be accepted; no ideology can be accepted when it comes to mobility.”
