Highways and Highway TransportationChatburn, George R.
History
Highways and Highway Transportation
Chatburn, George R.
Roads; Transportation
Automotive transportation is a matter of such recent growth that
only a few of the elements entering it have as yet become fixed or
standardized--the whole question is still in the experimental or
growing stage. The next few years will probably see as many, if not
as radical, changes in equipment and operation as have the past few.
The law of evolution seems to include a period of slow growth or sort
of weak feeling-out; then a period of very rapid growth, developing
usually along several lines; and finally a ripening or fixing period
in which standardization is reached. The automotive industries are
now beginning the third period. Revolutionary changes are not to
be expected, but there will be many minor ones seeking efficiency
or economy. The machinery of transportation, the motor car and the
roadway, are, perhaps, in a later stage of standardization than are
the social and legal phases of the subject. The relative rights of the
people on the street and driver of the car have yet to be determined.
The relation between automotive transportation and the older forms
of transportation is still in a very formative stage. Plans and
organizations for operating systems of highway transport and methods
of accounting which shall be fair to owner and patron have in a large
measure yet to be developed.
These things must necessarily be true in a new and growing industry.
Why, encyclopedias published in the ’eighties make no mention
whatever of the motor car or automobile. In fact, the first practical
automobiles were put on the market after 1893, and trucks were not
sold as such until 1903, ten years later. This was about the period
when automobiles were being made over by change of body into “business
wagons.” But so rapidly has the use of the motor car grown, automobile
registrations increasing from about one million in 1912 to more than
eleven millions in 1922, that, so it is stated, 80 per cent of all cars
manufactured are still in use.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account