“Dangerous Instrumentality”: The Bystander as Subject in Automobility

ABSTRACT The automobile has been rendered invisible as a designed object that injures not only its consumers but other users of the street. This blind spot in how liability has been distributed in crash injuries has had three primary effects. First, it has resulted in a material distribution of goods in which the legal liability of automobile design as a cause of injury has been minimized. Second, it has determined how goods such as public space have been distributed, and third, it has had a constitutive role on how social and legal subjects such as a bad mothers and negligent drivers have been produced.