The War on Cars The Creation of America's Car Culture
Nov 11, 2025
Historian Peter Norton, known for his insights on America’s automotive history, delves into the early 20th century's struggle between pedestrians and cars. He recounts the public outrage over rising traffic fatalities in the 1920s and the push for safety measures like speed governors. Norton highlights the collaboration between a car salesman and a traffic expert which led to reengineering city streets for cars, prioritizing vehicles over pedestrians, and ultimately reshaping American urban landscapes to foster car dependency.
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Car Dominance Was Manufactured
- Peter D. Norton discovered that early 20th-century U.S. streets were dense with pedestrians, streetcars, and bikes before cars dominated.
- That dominance was not inevitable but the result of organized action and strategy by automobile interests.
Marietta O'Donnell And Public Outrage
- Peter D. Norton recounts the 1923 Cincinnati killing of Marietta O'Donnell by a stolen car and the riot that followed.
- He uses the incident to show how lethal cars were and how communities protested widespread motor violence.
Streets Once Belonged To People
- Courts and public monuments in the 1920s often framed pedestrian deaths as societal problems, not individual blame.
- That era included language asserting that children "have a right to the streets."
