Norton has written about the history of the car, from a societal U.S. perspective, describing in depth how different groups, like store owners, traffic engineers, the police, pedestrians and newspapers viewed the advent of the car in the early 20th century.
One conclusion is that the automobile industry seem to have won by appealing to freedom, as their prime argument.
He has received prizes for teaching as well as the Abbot Payson Usher Prize of the Society for the History of Technology for "the best scholarly work published during the preceding three years under the auspices of the Society for the History of Technology".
Amongst his most cited writings are:[4] In 2021 Norton published the book, Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving.
For many decades in several waves, the car conglomorate has been selling "the next big thing" as a glorious solution to the public, media and politicians.