Review of Autophobia : Love and Hate in the Automotive Age

As Brian Ladd’s introduction tells us, autophobia is “an obscure psychiatric diagnosis of ‘fear of oneself’”. Ladd justifies his use of the term to indicate fear or hatred of cars on the basis that cars are so ubiquitous that to hate them is “tantamount to fear of being human in the automobile age”. The opening chapter, on the attitudes of early motorists (including the Wind in the Willows’ Mr Toad) considers their battle with ramblers for dominance of the countryside, citing examples from the UK, Germany and the US.