No Cars!

Ignoring the wild implausibility of such a law a) being passed and b) remaining in place indefinitely...
Horses stick around longer in urban areas, and in urban areas would probably still be around today. Emergency services are a major problem--if someone is having a heart attack, or if their house is being robbed or on fire, you want to get there as fast as possible, and taking the train isn't going to cut it. Perhaps it is all done by helicopter, or some form of light motor vehicle which is technically not a car.

On the upside, the suburbs as we know them never come into existence--cities are forced to be built for pedestrians, cyclists, and rail, and are accordingly much more compact and walkable, reducing pollution and urban sprawl accordingly.

I agree it is an ASB scenario; the only way they could have even slowed down the advent of automobiles would be for the federal government refusing to provide road money to the States; dependent on private road building (toll roads/turnpikes) would have made the automobile less attractive to the working man.
 
Note for the United States, its even hard to get a POD that prevents personal cars from becoming almost exclusively the mode of transportation Americans were supposed to use, to the point of actively shutting down alternatives, even walking in some places. This is because of the USA

* being far and away the world's leading oil producer at the time,

* having just fought a war where mastery of internal combustion engine powered vehicles was critical

* desire to disperse the population away from central cities so they wouldn't get vaporized in a nuclear exchange

* having a serious post-war housing crisis that could most easily be remedied by just building lots of houses on the outskirts of cities and not bothering to connect them with street car lines.

Other countries didn't go as all out on this, for example in Russia nuclear bomb shelters were the preferred means of addressing the nuclear war issue, but given these factors its hard to even slow down the growth post World War 2 auto suburbs.

I am not suggesting that the combustion engine wouldn't be developed, it would be, and much of the mass transit system (if not all) would still be oil based, trains and buses; in regards to the burbs being developed I see no reason why a mass transit system couldn't provide the movement necessary to create the suburbs; even today much of the northeastern United States still moves from the burbs to the city via rail lines.

I don't understand how nuclear war fits into this scenario; do you believe that living in the New Jersey suburbs would protect you if New York City got nuked?
 
"do you believe that living in the New Jersey suburbs would protect you if New York City got nuked?"

Actually in this case it would since the prevailing winds would drive the fallout to the east. However when auto suburbs were kicked off in earnest, with heavy government encouragement, nuclear arsenals were much smaller and the bombs themselves and their radii much smaller. You absolutely could escape the effects of a nuclear weapon dropped on the center of a city by living twenty miles away. Later on things changed, but the investment had been made.
 
WI at the turn of the 19th-20th Century the United States of America had had the good sense to forbade the production of the automobile and forced Americans to be dependent on mass transportation. How different today would America be/function?

What would be missing; what would be gained?
Everyone moves to Canada.
 

Dolan

Banned
There will be no stone mask, Dio Brando never becoming a vampire, and the story of the Joestars will never be the same. Alt Joseph might still be born, although without fighting the Pillar Men, he would end up as a street bum in either London or New York.

Wait a minute, this isn't Fandom...

Anyway, without Cars, I guess there will be an even more economic disparity between urban and rural society. Effective personal or family transport is essential to bridging large land areas and naturally spread developments.

Without Cars, sure, the Urbanites would admittedly end up faring much better than today, but that would be at the expense of rural agriculture regions, and this would make even more urbanization pressures, resulting in decreasing food production that might end up in famine due to crop failures.
 
I absolutely see the good sense that the OP is alluding to.

As a good way to achieve this, I propose upholding the value of human (and animal) lives in legal liability issues over the newly-invented "rights" of motorists to drive.
In Germany, the 1909 "Law on Motorised Traffic" paved the way; it is often primarily seen as an early regulation IOTL, but what really changed things back then was § 7, in which the car driver's liability for the damage of goods and animals, the hurting and loss of human lives was excluded in cases in which the accident was caused "by an unforeseeable event, which was not caused by an unsuitability of the car [...] and against which the driver had taken any reasonable precautions".
This was later taken to mean that if you walk around on that part of a street which was now reserved for motorised traffic, it was your fault if you got hit. (Same with your cows, sheep etc. who wander onto a street.)
Scrap this, and have jurisdiction converge on the view that, whenever someone is killed or harmed by a car without unequivocal intention of suicide or self-harm, or something is damaged by a car without it being hurled into the car's pathway with malicious intention, the driver is fully and exclusively liable for negligent homicide / assault / material damage, and motorised traffic is going to be too risky to become anything other than a flamboyant hobby of the wealthy in reasonably populated areas - which at the same time doesn't preclude the widespread use of internal combustion engine-driven vehicles in areas where accidents are much less likely, like tractors or combines on fields.
 
(oh, and of the course the following paragraphs only made it worse, with § 8 excluding passengers and slow vehicles, § 9 mentioning the fault of the damaged, and §§ 12-14 limiting the amount and time frame of the drivers' liability. Even scrapping § 12 only might have deterred considerably.)
 
I don't know America well enough to be America specific. However, generally low car ownership was normal in most of the world at that time. People lived near their workplace. Suburbs were less viable for most people, So cities were more densely populated and the only people that lived in the countryside were the retired, the rich and farmers. Cycling and walking would be more common and families would not be so dispersed. Large supermarkets and out of town retailers would not exist.
 
Even without the ICE, cars are pretty much inevitable at some point, even if steam and electric vehicles are less efficient overall.
 
Without Cars, sure, the Urbanites would admittedly end up faring much better than today, but that would be at the expense of rural agriculture regions, and this would make even more urbanization pressures, resulting in decreasing food production that might end up in famine due to crop failures.


No they would not. They would be dependent on whatever public transport was available at the time it was available at the price it was available and as said decreased food production limited job opportunities, poverty across the board and anyone with the opportunity moving to Canada or Mexico.

Need to build a wall.
 
The United States has banned easily manufactured, widely available, and popular products before, even to the point of shutting down entire industries, namely recreational drugs, including alcohol for fourteen years. However, this was done for quasi-religious reasons, and to get cars under this umbrella you need some sort of POD where the notion that moving away from your home town is somehow sinful gets ingrained in whatever religion Americans claim to believe.
Hard to do in the country of Manifest Destiny, you can't just go straight from "go West, young man" to neo-feudalism. Maybe it's possible elsewhere, like in a Germany where the Conservative Revolutionaries win or something.

I absolutely see the good sense that the OP is alluding to.

As a good way to achieve this, I propose upholding the value of human (and animal) lives in legal liability issues over the newly-invented "rights" of motorists to drive.
In Germany, the 1909 "Law on Motorised Traffic" paved the way; it is often primarily seen as an early regulation IOTL, but what really changed things back then was § 7, in which the car driver's liability for the damage of goods and animals, the hurting and loss of human lives was excluded in cases in which the accident was caused "by an unforeseeable event, which was not caused by an unsuitability of the car [...] and against which the driver had taken any reasonable precautions".
This was later taken to mean that if you walk around on that part of a street which was now reserved for motorised traffic, it was your fault if you got hit. (Same with your cows, sheep etc. who wander onto a street.)
Scrap this, and have jurisdiction converge on the view that, whenever someone is killed or harmed by a car without unequivocal intention of suicide or self-harm, or something is damaged by a car without it being hurled into the car's pathway with malicious intention, the driver is fully and exclusively liable for negligent homicide / assault / material damage, and motorised traffic is going to be too risky to become anything other than a flamboyant hobby of the wealthy in reasonably populated areas - which at the same time doesn't preclude the widespread use of internal combustion engine-driven vehicles in areas where accidents are much less likely, like tractors or combines on fields.
Defrauding car drivers by deliberately causing accidents works just as well in rural areas as it does in urban ones, probably even better since in urban areas driving at snail's pace eventually gets you somewhere, so this is probably a non-starter.
 

DougM

Donor
I have a service message For those of you that live in big cities (big enough to have or be able to have a mass transit system). Thier is an area of the US (and Canada and even most countries in Europe for that matter) that is not a medium to big city. And even an area that is not a small city. These are called Towns, Villages, and ultimately the “Country side”. And because you seam to be unaware of this fact people live in these non city locations. And the always have.

So you have a large number of folks that live in areas that will NEVER get mass transit. Befor the car they either walked or used horses. These people when told they can not have cars will be up in arms. They will start by taking it to courrt and will unless something drastic happens win the right to buy them as nothing in the constitution allies the Federal government to outlaw cars.
Assuming you somehow butterfly that then you will have an absolutely enormous number of people that will band together to vote against the idiots in office that voted this stupid law into place. So the law will not be around very long. Traditionally in the US voting a huge portion of the population does not vote, and the party elected is only voted in by a relatively small margin. Thus if you do something like this you will create a reason for a lot of folks to side with anyone that is against this dumb law and thus that person/ party will get elected and the law will be changed.

Frankly this whole POD is ASB and is based on a very biased point of view about the country, the car, and mass transit. As is evident by the statement that it would be “good sense “ to outlaw cars. This flys in the face of reality in that houses actually cause more of an environmental mess then the car. When used in the numbers that would be needed to support the modern US. And while the term Suburbs is new even before they came into being the US had (and has) a Lot of people that live outside the area that even the US at its peak could aford to build mass transit. People seam to have this false belief that mass transit can reach everyone. But even in the most densely packed countries in Europe huge chunks of any given country (probably the majority) are far enough from mass transit to need cars. So this whole anti car biased POD is not just ASB but utter anticar anti ICE fantasy.
 

This is a fair critique and as much as this is a thread written to get out frustrations about cars, we should admit it's the case if it's going to cause tension that might bring the mods down.

From an AH perspective I don't think it follows that people who've never had cars are going to be up in arms when they don't get them- how would they know what they're missing? But we would certainly know, and we should admit that removing the car as a consumer technology is going to make rural areas poorer.

And I agree that land use policy is probably the biggest part of the issue here. A system that discourages car use rather than outlawing it or pricing people out is going to be more fair.

We know we can write such land use policies in theory- inclusive zoning codes that emphasize walkability and transit, that insist on diversity of housing stock in price and form, that promote the active use of shared public spaces, etc.

We've arrived at these by a system of trial and error that has spanned at least the 20th century- and of course they're still being refined.

Having some visionary arrive at modern day conclusions and be taken seriously by the world back in, say, 1880, would be unlikely. The odds would have to be akin to winning the lottery, at least. But is winning the lottery ASB? It happens most every day somewhere in the world, right?

So a world where some modern city planning manifesto comes out over and above the influence of something like the Garden Cities Movement could prime society for "light" car ownership. Cars are still owned by a certain percentage of people and perhaps more easily rentable (or maybe we see the rise of shared ownership) for an even greater percentage. But use is way down. Big shopping trips, family outings, emergencies. Commuting is done by transit, maybe a bigger role for the bicycle here. Neighborhood markets would be a necessary land use policy component and close access to commercial districts.

It's true that in a country like the US, a lot of rural areas would still lose out. There'd be less call for so many excellent roads and highways. And with fewer suburbs and more call for produce closer to cities, more agriculture will take place in what would become OTL suburban and exurban belts. This is good for *those* rural residents, but OTL's far-rural mega farms just might not be quite as viable.

Just some thoughts; may have more later.
 
I’m interested as to what the “good sense” in forbidding cars is? They serve a legitimate need, and I’d be hard pressed to see any society wanting to ban what seems to be the next generation of transport?

Traffic jams; toll booths; road rage; expensive infrastructure (roads); dependence on foreign oil and resulting coercion; diminished disposable income (purchase & insurance); CO2 emissions; car accidents; fatal car accidents; less horses; unwanted pregnancies. Oh! and really bad drivers!

I thought the good sense was obvious, but will readily admit to the thought being ASB.
 
I’m interested as to what the “good sense” in forbidding cars is? They serve a legitimate need, and I’d be hard pressed to see any society wanting to ban what seems to be the next generation of transport?

. . . flat tires; expensive auto repairs; finding a parking space; crossing over into oncoming traffic while reaching down between the seats for the lit cigarette you dropped; having to let your son use the jeep on Saturday nights; a different unwanted pregnancy . . .
 
. . . flat tires; expensive auto repairs; finding a parking space; crossing over into oncoming traffic while reaching down between the seats for the lit cigarette you dropped; having to let your son use the jeep on Saturday nights; a different unwanted pregnancy . . .

And this is before we even entertain a Christine situation...
 
. Cycling and walking would be more common and families would not be so dispersed. Large supermarkets and out of town retailers would not exist.

Cycling was really popular. Popular enough that tinkerers thought, 'hey, I could take some bicycle bits and a motor, Steam or those new ICE and make....
A Quadracycle!
And no more pedalling! '

And some of those hobbyists reasoned that others would like them, but didn't have the skill to build one themselves.

They could make money by building and selling them.

That was Henry Ford in 1896.

EDIT: no out of town retailers? Richard Sears started mail order watch parts in 1886 from Minneapolis. By 1892 he was in Chicago, and partnered with Alva Roebuck. They did more Watch mail orders, and decided to diversify the product line in 1893, giving rural residents more choices than the local General Store
 
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From the German perspective - and Germany should in theory be much better ground for public transportation than the US:

Traffic jams; toll booths;
Less bad than failing public transportation, except in the couple dozen major city centres.

road rage;
I'm sensing less rage on the roads than in the train stations. Taking a more bird's eye view, stress levels seems to be mostly proportional to commute length independently of the means of transport, and commutes would probably be longer with a complete car ban.

expensive infrastructure (roads);
You still need roads for the bikes and buses.

dependence on foreign oil and resulting coercion;
So we can be dependent on Russia instead of the Saudis, since we're not self-sufficient on electricity. Great.

diminished disposable income (purchase & insurance);
Uh, as of now, cars win that one even with gas at 8$/gal. The thought of our public transportation operators being left without competition at all kinda scares me.

CO2 emissions; car accidents; fatal car accidents;
Alright, I'll give you those.

less horses; unwanted pregnancies.
I'm pretty sure you get more unwanted pregnancies when you have more horses

Oh! and really bad drivers!
When on foot, it's the cyclists I'm afraid of. The bad drivers are predictably bad at least.
 
When on foot, it's the cyclists I'm afraid of. The bad drivers are predictably bad at least.

Runaway horses were responsible for many deaths and injuries, and that's not counting what you got from all that dried horse manure blowing into your houses and workplaces, let alone on your shoes.
 
From the German perspective - and Germany should in theory be much better ground for public transportation than the US:


Less bad than failing public transportation, except in the couple dozen major city centres.


I'm sensing less rage on the roads than in the train stations. Taking a more bird's eye view, stress levels seems to be mostly proportional to commute length independently of the means of transport, and commutes would probably be longer with a complete car ban.


You still need roads for the bikes and buses.


So we can be dependent on Russia instead of the Saudis, since we're not self-sufficient on electricity. Great.


Uh, as of now, cars win that one even with gas at 8$/gal. The thought of our public transportation operators being left without competition at all kinda scares me.


Alright, I'll give you those.


I'm pretty sure you get more unwanted pregnancies when you have more horses

When on foot, it's the cyclists I'm afraid of. The bad drivers are predictably bad at least.

lol -- Ok I got to work on my punctuation!
 
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