Anne Lutz Fernandez
Anne Lutz Fernandez is a former corporate executive with experience in management and marketing of consumer brands such as Weight Watchers frozen foods and Bufferin pain relievers. She also spent a decade as an investment banker in New York and London where her work included marketing the firm's services to multinational corporations and advising clients on strategic mergers and acquisitions. She left her position as Director at Credit Suisse to become a writer and teacher. She currently teaches English and lives in Connecticut with her husband, who is also a teacher. She co-authored her first book, Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on our Lives, with her sister, anthropologist Catherine Lutz.
Recent Posts
Magic Cars and Silver Bullets: Will the Self-Driving Car Save the World?
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Back in the day, we beheld the future, and in it, we were zipping about in electric cars. Yes, on that day way back in the aughts, we beheld a future in which a passel of problems were about to become passé: crippling gas prices, entanglements with oil-rich frenemies, dirty air, and climate-changing emissions would […]
Multi-Modal Summer Reading
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Summer gives permission to set aside serious reading for the refreshment of fluffier stuff. This year, though, several meaningful books on transportation are out that you might want to tuck into your beach bag. Each is that rare thing: a should-read that’s also a want-to-read. Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by […]
High Anxiety: Good Parents and Bad Parents on the Road
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America’s roads have suddenly become dangerous places for America’s children. At least, that’s what’s suggested by a flurry of viral stories involving kids and cars. In May, an inebriated Florida couple made news when they took their granddaughter for a joy ride, pulling her behind their SUV in a toy car. Then came the story […]
The Auto Industry Wants Your Thanks
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Feeling warmer and fuzzier about the auto industry bailout? With the help of the Obama reelection campaign, the industry is convincing more Americans that the $80 billion they forked over to save it were dollars well spent. In the latest Pew poll, the public responded more positively toward the bailout than ever before, with 56 […]
Nothing to Fear But Drivers’ Lack of Fear
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Recently, I shared with a car enthusiast friend that I would never enjoy driving as much as he did, in part because cars scared me a little. I had experienced crashes and lost loved ones to them, I explained, which had a lasting effect. This struck him as both silly (who’s afraid of cars?) and […]
Pitchfork-Wielding Consumers Hold Auto Industry Hostage!
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It’s sad, really. Tremendous gains in vehicle fuel efficiency have been squandered, MIT’s Christopher Knittel demonstrates in a study published in the American Economic Review. Knittel’s analysis quantifies how, while automakers have applied meaningful fuel economy innovations over the past several decades, these have produced only modest gains in miles per gallon, because at the […]
Getting Young People Back Into Cars Is Auto Industry Job #1
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While the choked parking lots at many suburban high schools might mislead you, young people today are less interested in driving and owning cars than their counterparts in previous generations. This is happy news for environmentalists and complete streets advocates, who see fewer vehicles on the road as key to a healthier, wealthier society. For […]
Time to See Older Drivers Through Dry Eyes
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“Have you cried at your desk at work yet today? Would you like to?” Time Magazine asked last week, inviting its readers to indulge in emotion on behalf of an Iowa couple whose story went viral last week. Gordon and Norma Yeager died as the result of a car crash, the same way about 630 […]
A Back-to-School Syllabus for Complete Streets Advocates
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While Hollywood’s screenwriters, FX wizards, and product placers have contributed mightily to the idea of the automobile as the vehicle of freedom, joy, and rebellion, our literary lions have often taken a more gimlet-eyed view of car culture. Now, as summer ends, high school and college students across the country will put the car chases […]
The Once and Future Auto Bailouts
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You’d think the Obama campaign had confused Michigan and Ohio with Iowa and New Hampshire. As his 2012 Republican challengers flooded early primary states last month, the President instead headed to where he could stand beside beaming auto executives and watch proud workers toiling on once-idle assembly lines. The Obama administration and the industry have […]
Five Media Myths That Perpetuate Car Culture
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Another day, another news story, another media outlet wielding an old saw like this one: High gas prices are a political problem for the president because Americans “love their cars.” American car culture, fed by everything from our sprawled-out landscape to a daily bombardment of car ads, is also kept alive by journalists’ use of […]
This Is Your Brain on Cars—Oh, and Your Lungs and Heart and Gut, Too
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Gerontologists in a laboratory at the University of Southern California exposed a group of mice to the same atmospheric conditions that humans encounter when driving along the freeway. Horrifyingly, they discovered that the mice’s brains showed the kind of swelling and inflammation associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The researchers didn’t super-dose to get these […]