Fighting Traffic Quotes

“The median state-designated speed limit in cities in 1906 was 10 miles per hour, and local authorities usually could (and often did) set still lower limits.44 States were slow to raise limits; Indiana's limit in cities, 8 miles per hour in 1906, had been raised only to 10 miles per hour by 1919.45 Police usually enjoyed the support of city newspapers for their low speed limits.”
― Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City

“Editorial cartoons portrayed the accident problem as a matter of innocent pedestrians (overwhelmingly children) and motorist villains. A motoring Grim Reaper rivaled Uncle Sam for dominance of cartooning's iconography. Many city people wrote letters to their newspapers complaining of the new motorized scourge, and particularly of its invasion of the rights of pedestrians. They overwhelmingly outnumbered letter writers who defended the automobile or who faulted the pedestrian.”
― Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City