Journalists bemoaned the proliferation of “road hogs,” “speed maniacs,” “Sunday drivers,” “juggernauts,” and the dreaded “flivverboob,” the epithet for an inconsiderate motorist. The automobile struck critics as not only dangerous but depraved. The moment that “the foot touches the accelerator and the hand grasps the wheel,” chided one reporter, law-abiding citizens “become afflicted with the gas rabies.”
