Re:Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed o...
by burlesona on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @11:34AM
(#20402949)
There’s actually a dichotomy:
Car support was pretty ubiquitous in rural areas where you really needed a horse to get around anyway and it really did radically improve life to get a car.
But car support in cities was quite tepid before the late 20’s, and a significant concerted effort of government and industry together ramrodded them in and sold it through a long propaganda campaign that eventually was accepted.
There’s a book about this early history called Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton. The US came fairly close to banning cars in a number of cities, and to requiring mechanical governors to a 20mph limit in many others. A bunch of places installed memorials and monuments to “all the children slain by drivers” and so on.
It’s really interesting history that the auto lobby has worked hard to obscure.
Car support was pretty ubiquitous in rural areas where you really needed a horse to get around anyway and it really did radically improve life to get a car.
But car support in cities was quite tepid before the late 20’s, and a significant concerted effort of government and industry together ramrodded them in and sold it through a long propaganda campaign that eventually was accepted.
There’s a book about this early history called Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton. The US came fairly close to banning cars in a number of cities, and to requiring mechanical governors to a 20mph limit in many others. A bunch of places installed memorials and monuments to “all the children slain by drivers” and so on.
It’s really interesting history that the auto lobby has worked hard to obscure.