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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: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @03:12PM (5 children)
This is actually a common misconception, legally speaking. In a state governed by the rule of law, there are actually no such things as "privileges".
Owning a drivers license is obviously not a right, because then nobody would be legally allowed to take it away from you, under any circumstance and for any reason whatsoever. Heck, any kind of license wouldn't even be necessary for driving a vehicule on public roads.
On the onther hand, it is also not a privilege. A privilege is a "permission" that is granted to you by a superior authority, at its discretion. If owning a drivers license were a privilege, then the motor vehicule authority would be legally allowed to take it away from you at any time, for any reason whatsoever, and even without any reason at all. But they can't. If you obey all the rules and meet all the required conditions enumerated in the law, the motor vehicule authority are not only legally forbiden from taking away your license, they are legally obligated to grant you one.
The rule of law is actually something that is greatly misundertood by a large percentage of the population, which is very sad. In a state governed by the rule of law, citizens are not obligated to obey the governement, nor is the governement obligated to obey its citizens; by the rule of law, both the citizens and the governement are obligated to obey the law. This is the fundamental principle on which free democratic nations are built.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 30 2019, @03:30PM (2 children)
You've mostly got the "privileges" down, but you miss a key factor. Yes, you may be stripped of your privileges. It happens all the time in the military. Privileges are granted based upon rank, and/or position. And, you may be stripped of rank and/or position, with cause. At which point, you lose all of the privileges associated with that rank and/or position. Privileges, such as use of the Acey-Deucey lounge, use of the Petty Officer's club, or the Chief's club, membership in a private mess, keeping personal firearms aboard ship, or on base - on and on it goes. Privileges are generally taken away as a result of some misconduct, which is the case in revocation of a driver's license. As you have pointed out, that misconduct leading to revocation of a driver's license is also a violation of the law.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @09:01PM (1 child)
I think we're disagreing on semantics here. The examples of "privileges" you give, I call "conditional rights".
And example of what I call "privilege" would be a landowner giving you permission to hunt on his property. In my book, this is truly a privilege he's giving you, because at any moment, and for any reason, or no reason at all, he can take away this permission.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @12:46PM
So, like the typical social network TOS?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @04:44PM (1 child)
Just like spelling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30 2019, @09:03PM
Not all posters on this board are native english speakers.
How many languages do you speak ?