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When Cities Treated Cars as Dangerous Intruders
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
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
The car industry began to steer the debate in a totally new direction in 1923, not because of a sudden concern for pedestrian welfare, but out of concern for its own survival. After years of rapid growth, sales of cars had fallen for the first time, and many in the industry felt that the constant portrayal of their products as child-killing death m
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
Under the banner of road safety and pedestrian education, cars had taken over the streets. Walking in the street had gone from being a right to being wrong.
Tom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
In a speech in 1906, Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, worried that loutish motorists were fanning the flames of resentment toward the rich: “Nothing has spread socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of automobiles. To the countryman they are a picture of arrogance of wealth with all its independence and careles
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
Industry groups and car clubs realized that they could steer public opinion when they acted in concert. The day after the Cincinnati vote, the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce (NACC), an industry body, formed a safety committee. Together with the American Automobile Association (AAA), the leading motorists’ club, it began planning a new and
... See moreTom Standage • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
For decades, the automobile provided a pathway to economic opportunity and upward mobility. But now the negative consequences — including a reliance on fossil fuels and increased emissions of greenhouse gases; a dramatic increase in the rate of deaths caused by cars[x]; the disconnection of local community and weakening of local economies; the rise... See more
Medium • There Are No Cars in Wakanda
Keely Adler added
It would be a massive cultural and behavioural shift to radically recast the automobile as a symbol not of freedom, but of restriction.
Medium • There Are No Cars in Wakanda
Keely Adler and added
In December 1924, Herbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce, convened the first National Conference on Street and Highway Safety, with the aim of drawing up a set of safety rules that could be used across the country. The industry got Hoover to water down his initial hostility toward cars and installed its own representatives on the key committees
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