Dwelling on Everyday Car Journeys

This paper explores the experiences of different emotions that develop during commuting practices between home and the workplace. In an explorative form, the analyses will elucidate on the various emotional states of the drivers as they drive through different urban and rural landscapes and manages different traffic conditions as well as the emotional states related to the drivers’ thoughts about work and family issues, the materiality of the car and the recreational activities inside the car.

Analyses are based on a web-based questionnaire, sent to 373 participating drivers in the Big Data research project Intelligent Transportation System Platform North Denmark (Lahrmann 2012). In that project data on e.g. position and speed was collected via an On Board Unit from more than 400 cars in 2012-2014 (Tøfting et. al. 2014). The full dataset includes a driven distance of approximately 14 million km and approximately 1.35 million trips (Reinau et.al 2016). Commuting routes will be identified for each respondent by means of data from the On Board Unit and a qualitative analysis of their characteristics will further add to the insights on the significance of the landscape and traffic conditions for the emotional experiences related to commuting.

The findings will be discussed using theoretical inspiration from Sheller (2004), Bull (2003) and Thrift (2004) and we will suggest that the various emotional experiences of the commuters are of great importance for their ability to use of the car as a dwelling place.