While nearly all accidents could be explained by any of several faults, certain explanations were favored at the expense of others.

Success in such historical investigations requires not merely looking back from where we stand today at the actors of times past, but getting back to them, so we can stand next to them and adopt their perspective.

order.

efficiency.

"motordom." Often they presented their position clothed in a rhetoric of freedom.9

In the city street of 1920 the automobile was a nuisance, even an intruder. Automobiles were extravagant in their use of scarce space, they were dangerous (especially to non-motorists), they had to be parked, and they served only a small minority of city people.

The car had already cleaned up its once bloody reputation in cities, less by killing fewer people than by enlisting others to share the responsibility for the carnage.

In 1939 motordom's work culminated in one of the most monumental works of promotional showmanship in the history of technology: the Futuramamodel depicting the motorized city of 1960, displayed in General Motors' "Highways and Horizons" pavilion at the New York World's Fair. It was a motor age dream city, entirely dependent on automobiles but

Walking, however, was obviously necessary, and pedestrians were virtually incapable of causing accidental injury to others.