Take It To the Streets

By Aaron Naparstek
A new mode of transportation is muscling its way onto city streets. Politicians, editorial boards, cops and business groups consider it a nuisance and a threat. The public is angry and confused. Suddenly, this popular new urban transportation option is challenging New Yorkers’ longstanding traditions and ideas about what a street is for, who gets to use it and how. Used by a relatively small number of New Yorkers, this new mode of transport makes its presence felt in a big way. Local politicians insist that something needs to be done. Editorial boards vilify it. The cops are cracking down. War? Housing? Education? Poverty? Who cares! Some days, if the local press is any guide, it seems like the No. 1 issue on the civic agenda is this new form of transportation on New York City streets.
This is a story about the Great Bike Backlash of 2011, right? Nope. I’m talking about the Automobile Backlash of 1920.
The tabloid ravings, harsh police tactics and political posturing aimed against bikes and bike lanes may seem intense today. In a historic context, however, the Bike Backlash of 2011 is nothing compared to the battle that took place during the decade after World War I when organized “motordom” carved out its place on New York City streets. (Yes, that’s how the automobile interests actually referred to themselves: They were “motordom.”)
University of Virginia professor Peter Norton details the early history of the car and the city in his wonky but fascinating book, Fighting Traffic. He describes the “blood, grief and anger in the American city” and the “violent revolution in the streets” of New York and other U.S. cities as automobile owners bullied their way on to city streets, literally, leaving a trail of mangled children’s bodies in their wake.
In the 1920s, motor vehicle crashes killed more than 200,000 Americans, a staggering number considering how many fewer cars actually existed in those days. These days, 35,000-or-so Americans are killed in car wrecks annually. Most of the dead are drivers and passengers on highways and in rural places. In the 1920s, most of the dead were kids living in cities. In the first four years after the Armistice of World War I, more Americans were killed in car wrecks than had died in battle in France.
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https://www.nypress.com/article-22359-take-it-to-the-streets.htmloldId.2011042909182127