A Captive Audience: Traffic Radio as Guard and Escape

Abstract

Radio finds a highly captive audience in the car. Motorists listen to radio for music and generic news, but also prick up their ears for specific traffic reports, despite the recent rise of navigation technologies with real-time traffic information. Traffic radio helps drivers to prepare for or prevent traffic problems. This essay explores the contexts in which traffic radio acquired its dual role as the motorists' guard and escape, and how it is now seen to contribute to sustainable mobility.

Note

Notes

¹ These data are based on observations of Dutch, German, Belgian and U.S. radio broadcasts by Marith Dieker and (for the New York area) on a personal Skype conversation by Marith Dieker with New York traffic reporter Bernie Wagenblast (November 14, 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karin Bijsterveld

Karin Bijsterveld (Ph.D., Maastricht University, 1995) is professor of Science, Technology and Modern Culture at Maastricht University. She is co-editor, with Trevor Pinch, of the Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (2012). Her research focuses on issues at the crossroads of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Sound Studies (http://fasos-research.nl/sonic-skills).

Marith Dieker

Marith Dieker (M.Sc., Maastricht University, 2013) is a Ph.D. candidate at Maastricht University. She is currently working on her research project “Talking You Through: Traffic Information and Car Radio, 1950s–Now.”

The historical part of this essay has been adapted from Sound and Safe: A History of Listening Behind the Wheel by K. Bijsterveld, E. Cleophas, S. Krebs, and G. Mom (2014), and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.