| > I do think cars have their place, but I don't understand how people have come to believe that cars in, say, Manhattan or the center of Paris, make a lot of sense. People have come to believe it because they believed it when cars first came on the scene. They believed it then because before cars major dense urban areas were not low traffic pedestrian safe areas that got ruined by cars. They were areas full of heavy horse and horse drawn vehicle traffic with pedestrian fatality rates from horse and horse drawn vehicle accidents comparable to modern pedestrian fatality rates from cars in those cities in modern times. NYC for instance in 1900 actually had a higher pedestrian fatality rate from horse accidents than from car accidents in 2003 [1]. In England and Wales the car rate is a little higher than the horse rate [2]. Here are some accounts of what horse accidents were like [3]. (As noted in the BMJ article, a direct comparison of fatality rates might not be the right comparison because we have much better treatment for injuries nowadays. Many accidents that were fatal back then would be survivable today). From that BMJ article: > Motor vehicles were welcomed because they were faster, safer, unlikely to swerve or bolt, better able brake in an emergency, and took up less room: a single large lorry could pull a load that would take several teams of horses and wagons – and do so without producing any dung. So of course people accepted cars in their city centers. They were a big improvement over what they had before. [1] https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-p... [2] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/cars-and-horse... [3] https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/local/exeter-news-... |