[mikepurvis]

> What with the panic these mediums generate, you have to wonder if cars would have gotten off the ground and become commonplace or if they would have just been panic banned.

They tried: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/

It was opposed by a concerted effort from car companies and other advocates to depict car skeptics as out of touch and paranoid, and to simultaneously lobby for a bunch of new laws around right of way, jaywalking, and so on. It may well be that if YouTube and cable news had existed then, the concerned advocates would have carried the day and North America might have built a robust, high speed rail network instead of the interstates, with every major metro area having the comprehensive regional rail needed to bring commuters in from suburbs without private vehicles.

We can't know exactly what that alternate present would have looked, but there are many for whom it might have been much better (though definitely not car companies or airlines, of course).