Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (Inside Technology)

Before other auto promoters, Charles Hayes saw that industry leaders had to reshape the traffic safety debate. As president of the Chicago Motor Club, Hayes warned his friends that bad publicity over traffic casualties could soon lead to “legislation that will hedge the operation of automobiles with almost unbearable restrictions.” The solution was... See more

Today it is a commonplace that the automobile represents freedom. But to many Americans in the 1920s, the car and its driver were tyrants that deprived others of their freedom.

With government backing, behavior had shifted entirely by 1930, and the default was that streets were for cars, and pedestrians should limit themselves to crosswalks. The industry had successfully changed attitudes from always blaming the driver to assuming any collision was an unavoidable accident and probably the fault of a reckless pedestrian—an

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