When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Mike Sales
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When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Mike Sales »

Interesting history.
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. 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 to persuade city people that “the streets are made for vehicles to run upon.” 
City people saw the car not just as a menace to life and limb, but also as an aggressor upon their time-honored rights to city streets. “The pedestrian,” explained a Brooklyn man, “as an American citizen, naturally resents any intrusion upon his prior constitutional rights.”  Custom and the Anglo-American legal tradition confirmed pedestrians’ inalienable right to the street. In Chicago in 1926, as in most cities, “nothing” in the law “prohibits a pedestrian from using any part of the roadway of any street or highway, at any time or at any place as he may desire.”
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/when ... obal-en-GB
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Mick F
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Mick F »

America in the 20's?

My Aunt Nancy was a Florida Girl, and her father was a moonshine runner during Prohibition.
She was born in 1910 I think, could have been earlier.
Her father bought her a car when she was ten or eleven, and gave her enough gas to get to school and back, he also had to put wooden blocks on the pedals so she could reach.

FACT.

She wasn't unusual in those days. Cars were well-accepted in USA in the 1920's.
Mick F. Cornwall
Mike Sales
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Mike Sales »

Mick F wrote: 11 Aug 2022, 3:32pm America in the 20's?

My Aunt Nancy was a Florida Girl, and her father was a moonshine runner during Prohibition.
She was born in 1910 I think, could have been earlier.
Her father bought her a car when she was ten or eleven, and gave her enough gas to get to school and back, he also had to put wooden blocks on the pedals so she could reach.

FACT.

She wasn't unusual in those days. Cars were well-accepted in USA in the 1920's.
Well accepted? This article seems to show considerable , though ultimately futile, resistance to the takeover of the public highway.
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Isn't it a blooming shame?
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Bmblbzzz »

The motor industry fought and won, including by the invention of concepts such as "jay walking".
Nearholmer
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Post by Nearholmer »

I’ve been reading a CTC route guide dating from 1913 which I acquired from a fellow correspondent here, and what surprised me was that the editor talks about cyclists being best to stick to the byways, rather than main roads, because of motor cars, even at that early date. I think the issue was mainly the dust and stones thrown-up by cars, rather than the number of them.

The ‘take off’ of motoring was astonishingly rapid, going from effectively no cars in Britain in 1895 (I think there were a handful used only on their rich technophile owners’ estates), tens or maybe low hundreds in 1900, to something like 130 000 by the start of WW1. One of the things we tend to overlook is that ‘hard’ road surfaces were introduced largely for the benefit of motorists, and that everyone who cycled outside of the core of major towns was a ‘gravel biker’ back then. When was ‘Wind in the Willows’ published? 1908, bang in the middle of the first mad rush to motoring.
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Tiggertoo »

It was Henry Ford who convinced the government to build the Interstate Highway system so he could sell more cars.

America has not looked back since - except to see the last passenger train system disappear in their review mirror.

Once enclosed in their cocoons, there has been no reversing of that, and other than in California and the Eastern seaboard, there are no virtually passenger trains in the US (Amtrak hardly deserves the designation) and the car rules.

It is the same in Britain of course - to borrow from another thread, those who can afford cars have ditched the bike as a form of transport.
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Vantage »

Carlton Reid who wrote the book "Roads Were Not Built For Cars" would argue that point.
He states that in his research, paved roads were in fact campaigned for by cyclist organisations such as the CTC (CUK) and the League of American Wheelmen (now the League of American Bicyclists)
The LOAB website says this movement dates back to 1880 due to cyclists complaints about riding in rutted rough roads.
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by basingstoke123 »

Bmblbzzz wrote: 11 Aug 2022, 3:44pm The motor industry fought and won, including by the invention of concepts such as "jay walking".
Fortunately, this concept does not exist over here.

There are very few legal restrictions on pedestrians. You can cross a road anywhere, although you should only cross where and when it is safe. At a light controlled crossing, while the High Way Code says you should only cross on a green light, this is not the law. But you MUST NOT (the law) loiter on any type of crossing.

In practice, pedestrians have been pushed of many roads, particularly A and some B roads out side of towns (and often within towns).
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Post by Nearholmer »

He states that in his research, paved roads were in fact campaigned for by cyclist organisations such as the CTC
That sounds right to me, but their campaign wasn’t very successful judging by the contents of that old CTC route book. It gives a summary of road conditions for each route, and makes special mention of tarred sections, of which I can find less than a handful in the whole of SW England, whereas there are many sections highlighted as being in poor condition.

What seems to have ‘turned the corner’ for hard-surfacing of roads was the damage done by motor vehicles, the dust they threw up in dry weather, and the campaigns run by their wealthy owners. The AA had more voices in high places at that juncture than did the CTC, although I suspect that the CTC had far more members. Presumably the increase in commercial motor traffic after WW1, lorries and buses, was part of the story too.

PS: I don’t know whether the author you mention delves into this, but the term ‘paved’ has to be used with care. Nowadays we use it to mean something like sealed or hard, but historically it included loose paving as well, so a Macadam road was ‘paved’ with graded layers of stone, small gravel as the top wearing surface. There’s a section of ‘Macadamised’ turnpike reproduced at the Chiltern Open Air Museum, and it is a surprisingly good surface, one that would be lovely to cycle on, but one that would take a lot of maintenance to keep in good order under heavy traffic, and which would ‘cut up’ very easily with tractive forces through the wheel-road interface as opposed to through the hooves of horses.
Last edited by Nearholmer on 12 Aug 2022, 8:17am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Jon Lucas »

Nearholmer wrote: 12 Aug 2022, 12:34am
He states that in his research, paved roads were in fact campaigned for by cyclist organisations such as the CTC
That sounds right to me, but their campaign wasn’t very successful judging by the contents of that old CTC route book. It gives a summary of road conditions for each route, and makes special mention of tarred sections, of which I can find less than a handful in the whole of SW England, whereas there are many sections highlighted as being in poor condition.

What seems to have ‘turned the corner’ for hard-surfacing of roads was the damage done by motor vehicles, the dust they threw up in dry weather, and the campaigns run by their wealthy owners. The AA had more voices in high places at that juncture than did the CTC, although I suspect that the CTC had far more members. Presumably the increase in commercial motor traffic after WW1, lorries and buses, was part of the story too.
I am about to start a thread in the On The Road section on this very subject.

I did post a suggestion a few days ago that it would be useful to have a separate section for discussion on the history of cycling, which this thread would obviously fit into very well, so wondered what others felt about this.
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Post by Nearholmer »

Personally, I’d love it, because I’m into the history of technology, especially from c1870 onwards, more widely, and have recently begun to get into the technical and social history of cycling.

See my PS to previous post about the meaning of ‘paved’ in connection with roads.
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by mjr »

Nearholmer wrote: 12 Aug 2022, 12:34am What seems to have ‘turned the corner’ for hard-surfacing of roads was the damage done by motor vehicles, the dust they threw up in dry weather, and the campaigns run by their wealthy owners. The AA had more voices in high places at that juncture than did the CTC, although I suspect that the CTC had far more members.
Indeed: the first general speed limit laws for motor cars were justified by reducing road damage on corners and thereby reducing the numbers of horses injured by falling on ruts, not directly reducing injury and damage in crashes or any cares about pleb walkers or riders.
There’s a section of ‘Macadamised’ turnpike reproduced at the Chiltern Open Air Museum, and it is a surprisingly good surface, one that would be lovely to cycle on, but one that would take a lot of maintenance to keep in good order under heavy traffic, and which would ‘cut up’ very easily with tractive forces through the wheel-road interface as opposed to through the hooves of horses.
Rather than a museum example, there are (used to be?) macadam sections of the no-motor-vehicle road around Pitsford reservoir in Northamptonshire, if you'd like to ride some. Most of the smallest top layer has worn away but it's OK on 37s, rideable but rough on 25s.
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Post by Bmblbzzz »

Similarly "metalled roads" as marked on old OS maps, and still in use in NZ.
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Re: When-cities-treated-cars-as-dangerous-intruders/

Post by Bmblbzzz »

basingstoke123 wrote: 11 Aug 2022, 11:33pm
Bmblbzzz wrote: 11 Aug 2022, 3:44pm The motor industry fought and won, including by the invention of concepts such as "jay walking".
Fortunately, this concept does not exist over here.

There are very few legal restrictions on pedestrians. You can cross a road anywhere, although you should only cross where and when it is safe. At a light controlled crossing, while the High Way Code says you should only cross on a green light, this is not the law. But you MUST NOT (the law) loiter on any type of crossing.

In practice, pedestrians have been pushed of many roads, particularly A and some B roads out side of towns (and often within towns).
UK seems to be one of the few countries without this legal concept, though we have adopted the social construct.
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Post by axel_knutt »

Nearholmer wrote: 12 Aug 2022, 12:34ama Macadam road was ‘paved’ with graded layers of stone, small gravel as the top wearing surface. There’s a section of ‘Macadamised’ turnpike reproduced at the Chiltern Open Air Museum
There are hundreds (thousands?) of miles of roads built like that in the forests, I don't recall ever seeing the Forestry Commission run to the expense of tarmac for what's only a tiny volume of traffic.
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