When automobiles first started tearing through American streets a century ago, they weren’t exactly welcome. One of the main problems was that they were killing children: in 1921 alone, 286 children in Pittsburgh, 130 in Baltimore, and 97 in Washington, D.C. Cities memorialized the dead with monuments and solemn marches. A safety council in Detroit commemorated traffic deaths by ringing bells at city hall and churches; another in Brooklyn put up a “Death-O-Meter” near a major traffic circle that kept a running tally of those injured or killed.

It wasn’t just in cities. At the beginning of the 20th century, rural residents revolted as drivers of “horseless carriages” rammed into their livestock and their neighbors. Across the country, they threw stones and dung at cars, shot at them, and t

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