US traffic taming

and the last
traffic jam

Due to astronomical gas prices - at least for Americans - reports CNN, American cagers drove 11 billion fewer miles in March 08 than March 07 ... for the first time since 1942. And that's just a 4.3% reduction. Imagine if it were 10 or 20%? But what is truly amazing is that the obvious safety and environmental disadvantages didn't dissuade cagers earlier ... much earlier. Simply look at this published by Time on 15 December 1947!

The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims him, embroils him with the law and provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters... In some big cities, vast traffic jams never really got untangled from dawn to midnight; the bray of horns, the stink of exhaust fumes, and the crunch of crumpling metal eddied up from them as insistently as the vaporous roar of Niagara.

I particularly enjoy the reference to a mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters. YOINKS!!!