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100 Years: Motordom's Manifesto, November 9, 1922.
From Edward Mehren's editorial, "Motor Killings and the Engineer," Engineering News-Record.
Peter Norton
3,677 posts
Peter Norton
@PeterNorton12
Historian, author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, and of Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving.
Joined June 2012
- And the streetcar is electric. Wichita Falls, Texas, 1927.
- Without history we tend to consider the status quo normal, and other possibilities anomalous. But the original proponents of today's status quo on US streets called their own position "radical," and the status quo we live with every day was their far-fetched, radical aspiration.It’s Been 100 Years Since Cars Drove Pedestrians Off The Roads. Facing shocking numbers of killed pedestrians in 1922, E.J.Mehren stated that “the obvious solution lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for.” forbes.com/sites/carltonr…
- Priorities. Copenhagen, Jan. 4, 2024. photo: Brian Eugen Nielsen
- "The secret of science," said Henry Tizard, "is to ask the right question." This is not it.
- Disastrous US pedestrian safety trends are due in part to vehicle design. Massive vehicles with high front ends have vast blind spots. We have been here before. Long front ends have also limited drivers’ views. In 1941 automotive engineer Arthur Stevens proposed this redesign.
- We have a climate emergency. What does emergency response look like? In 1942, in response to an emergency, gasoline was rationed in the US; most drivers were limited to 3 gallons per week. Here we see parking for workers at the Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica.
- Calling pedestrians (etc) "vulnerable road users" is like calling songbirds "cat food": sometimes accurate, but always misleading.
- This is a $10 million plan to expand an elementary school’s capacity. For cars.
- "Children have a right to play in the streets unattended." Citing established precedent, so argued lawyers Nathan Porter and Samuel Holladay before the California Supreme Court in January, 1871. They were representing the father of John Schierhold, age 7. The Court agreed.
- On this date in 1926, pedestrians met at the St Louis Public Library on Olive Street to found the Pedestrians Union. The founders agreed that automobiles should be incapable of exceeding 15 mph. (St Louis Post-Dispatch)
- “The children don’t walk. They run. This is how they relate to their environment, and it’s in this way that their bodies and minds grow. A fundamental freedom that adults have to limit every day - ‘be careful!’ - because we’ve redesigned cities to drive through, not to live in.”Los niños no caminan. Corren. Es así que se relacionan con su entorno y es de esta manera que se desarrollan su cuerpo y su mente. Una libertad fundamental que los adultos tienen que limitar cada día - “tené cuidado! - porque hemos diseñado la ciudad para manejar, no para vivir.
00:00 - Permitting motorists to turn right on a red light at most urban and suburban intersections is deadlier for pedestrians. We’ve known this for 40 years.
