There was a period of time when some of Chicago's newspapers, especially the Tribune, treated traffic violence with the weight that gun violence is given today - covering every fatal crash, tallying up annual statistics, and devoting editorial attention to theories for reduction. - ThreadSky

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sorenspicknall.bsky.social • 1183 days ago

There was a period of time when some of Chicago's newspapers, especially the Tribune, treated traffic violence with the weight that gun violence is given today - covering every fatal crash, tallying up annual statistics, and devoting editorial attention to theories for reduction.

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carlnyberg312.bsky.social•23 days ago

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sorenspicknall.bsky.social•1183 days ago

This was most pronounced in the '20s and '30s (the newspaper clippings above are from 1924 and 1936, respectively), when auto crashes were considered a primary public menace. And like gun violence, many of the proposed solutions in print were based on vague claims and conjecture.

hangmanfan.bsky.social•88 days ago

What happened then? Did the Big Auto pay for them to stop?

sorenspicknall.bsky.social•88 days ago

In part, cars became normal and the topic became less flashy. But also, auto fatalities started decreasing relative to overall auto use because of interventions like separated highways and roadway barriers, which helped keep cars away from pedestrians, and improvements in auto occupant safety.

sorenspicknall.bsky.social•88 days ago

The history of the modern urban highway is in part the history of suburbanization, urban renewal, and segregation, but highways also resulted from a push to separate high-speed traffic from city street infrastructure and give cars a place to go that would endanger pedestrians less.

sorenspicknall.bsky.social•88 days ago

I haven't seen any specific scholarship on the potential influence of newspaper ad buys on '20s and '30s car crash reporting, but I imagine that could have also been a factor fueling reduced anti-car rhetoric in print as manufacturer and dealer advertising became a major newspaper ad category.

frankieffunk.bsky.social•88 days ago

It would be fun if Streetsblog or someone made counters that reused those graphics.

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