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In a new book, Policing the Open Road, How Cars Transformed American Freedom http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980860 the author makes the claim that the USA's slippery slope toward a totalitarian or police state (often discussed on SN) started when cars became popular. Before that time (about 100 years ago), most policing was handled by various non-gov't organizations and the professional police force was small. With the advent of the car, everyone (rich and poor, upstanding citizen or rogue) broke traffic laws and police forces expanded to deal with it--testing constitutional rights in the courts and many other aspects of our society.
The Boston Review http://bostonreview.net/law-justice/sarah-seo-how-cars-transformed-policing has a extended book review which is well worth a read. Here's a clip:
Before cars, police mainly dealt with those on the margins of society. Voluntary associations governed everyone else. Churches enforced moral norms, trade groups managed business relations, and social clubs maintained social harmony. Citizens and private groups, including banks and insurance companies, pursued criminal investigations and initiated prosecutions. Aside from the constable or sheriff, who worked for the court and mainly executed warrants, publicly-funded police rarely took part in private enforcement efforts. A nineteenth-century treatise on the “duties of sheriffs and constables” indicates that the bulk of their work was to serve summonses, warrants, and writs, as well as to supervise prisoners. Large cities began establishing police forces in the mid-nineteenth century, but even so, municipal coffers did not support the extent of protection that wealthier neighborhoods and business districts sought. A system of “special policemen” licensed by the government but paid for by private citizens—private security, essentially—filled the void.
This would all soon change when Americans embraced the “horseless carriage.” In 1910 the number of registered passenger cars was just under 500,000. That figure exploded to over 8 million in 1920 and to nearly 18 million in 1925—a thirty-fivefold increase in fifteen years. New regulatory and police practices soon developed to respond to cars’ mass adoption. Soon no one could drive without taking a test, applying for a license, registering the car, and buying insurance. And that was just the beginning. Once a person set out for a drive, speed limits, stoplights, checkpoints, and all the other requirements of the traffic code restricted how one could drive.
But towns and cities quickly ran into an enforcement problem: everybody violated traffic laws. Noncompliance was not a new phenomenon, but violations of the rules of the road presented a different quandary for two reasons. First, drivers included respectable people, and their numbers were growing every year. Second, traffic lawbreaking resulted in tremendous damage, injury, and death, and those numbers were increasing every day. It soon became clear that the public’s interest in street and highway safety required more policing.
This meant that everyone became subject to discretionary policing. The well-off were among the first to buy cars, as were farmers who needed cars for more practical reasons. Even if independent farmers may not have been as wealthy as the early auto enthusiasts, as a group, they enjoyed social standing in a country with a strong sense of agrarian virtue. Driving quickly became a middle-class, or what used to be called “business-class,” phenomenon by the mid-1920s, when car ownership passed a tipping point: 55.7 percent of families in the United States owned a car in 1926, and 18 percent of those had more than one. But even the rest of the population who did not drive and instead walked were policed, too, for the regulation of drivers on public streets also required the regulation of pedestrians on those same streets.
This completely transformed U.S. society. ...
So much for that fantasy of the open road!
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 30 2019, @02:44PM (10 children)
My grandmother, born in 1915, learned to drive in her late teens in nowhere Tennessee, in a car with no brakes. There were no license requirements for many years in her part of the world for many years after she learned to drive. Oh, and what do you do with no brakes when you're coming to a stop sign and there's traffic on the crossroad? Apparently, turn early and make a loop through the field, hope the intersection is clear on your next approach. Small town, everybody knows her car has no brakes, they're used to it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @03:56PM (7 children)
What happened when she was going down a long hill? Throw out an anchor?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @04:37PM (6 children)
Engage low gear before you get to the hill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @07:16PM (5 children)
And when you get to the bottom? Hope nobody is there?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @10:46PM (4 children)
Back home on the farm, we had a farm truck, and the brakes went out. Called the owner in Vegas, and he said we couldn't afford the parts to fix it, so we just drove it like that. Not on public roads, so not a lot of traffic, and you just had to prepare in advance for things, using the engine to slow down, and turning it off to come to a stop. The anchor didn't work, 'cause it'd just catch on something, and break the line or tear off whatever it was attached to.
Then the clutch went out. Call to Vegas. Owner on a losing streak. So we just drove it like that. Put truck in "granny", crank the starter, and we're off. Sychro-shift as needed. Downshifting was a bit more difficult, requiring more anticipation. Finally, a situation came up where I forgot about the no-clutch/no-brakes thing, and tried to make a turn. Slowed truck down by skidding sideways and putting it into a ditch to bring it to a stop.
So, it can be done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @12:39AM (3 children)
Can be done, not should. In a field and not on public roads. OP made the claim that his grandmother drove on public roads (with stop signs even) in a vehicle that was unsafe even under conditions of the time. Personally, I think you would have to be crazy to continue to drive a vehicle in that condition. He claims the neighbors knew of the problem and ignored it. I cannot imagine that they did not pay granny a visit to straighten her out for their own self preservation or that one of the townies wouldn't have tried to fix it for her. TN hill folk are usually pretty tight knit and tend to take care of their own. Either Granny was exaggerating or OP was.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @02:16PM (2 children)
he also said it was 1915, cars where just beginning to be available back then
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @05:04PM (1 child)
Brakes weren't standard equipment in 1915. Hell, brakes didn't make it to Tennessee until after the 1964 Voting Rights and Mandatory Brakes Act.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:08AM
Learn to read. She was BORN in 1915 and learned to drive in her late teens. And there were handbrakes on Conestoga wagons. The handbrake was standard equipment on the Model T Ford 1908-1927.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday July 01 2019, @12:50AM (1 child)
Perhaps a Model T? It was common to use reverse (planetary gears) for braking as the brakes were crap and often broke.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 01 2019, @02:47AM
Not sure, but I did get the impression that the car wasn't quite a universal tool the way they are today - it ran a couple of specific routes between the farm and town and that was about it. As I said earlier, everybody knew all about everybody else there, so when they saw/heard it coming, they knew what to expect. Never heard any stories about a crash or injury from that - there might have been a total of 6 cars in town at the time this one was running with no brakes, and after a year or so they finally had the money to do something about it - but, no sense in not using an otherwise nifty new car instead of the horse, particularly when the horse had other uses like plowing the field.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end