• bluewing@lemm.ee
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    18 hours ago

    There never was a vote to make it legal or illegal. And it was widely hailed as a great idea at the time. It was considered the best way for large cities to dig out from under the literal mountains of horse shit they were drowning in and that was polluting the ground water and killing children and adults alike from disease. Plus it gave people far more freedom to move about faster and father than they had by foot, horse, or train. Like it or not, the internal combustion engine has given you, personally, everything good and bad that you have at this very moment in time.

    But, like most great human ideas, there are always unintended consequences no one sees until they happen.

    • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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      14 hours ago

      Actually, there was a lot of push-back. People weren’t too happy that suddenly great big hunks of metal were hurling through public spaces at lethal speeds – but the car manufactures had money, so the press and the politicians sided with them.

      check out Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter D. Norton

    • trilobyte81@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Sure but now it is holding us back we need a nationwide high speed train network we are stuck in the 1930s while lots of other countries are in the 2030s