1900s Car History

748 Words3 Pages
Imagine roads, filled only with bicycles and pedestrians, with no cars in sight. It’s difficult to imagine today, but it would have been less so in the 1900s. The bicycle currently fulfills a very different purpose in society when you compare it to the past. The popularity of cars makes bicycling seem like a less pleasant form of transportation in the modern day, but it wasn’t always this way. In the 1900s, before the widespread popularity of the car, the bicycle provided an inexpensive means of transportation and granted a new found mobility to the masses. Perhaps most importantly, it prepared the world to accept to automobile, therefore helping create the world as we know it. Unfortunately, by preparing the world for the car, it lowered its…show more content…
Until 1900s, most of the roads were in poor condition. Mud, sand, gravel and cobblestones weren’t well suited to the thin bicycle wheels at the time. Bicyclist were pushing for the construction paved roads before the car was invented in 1885. If not for these paved roads, there would have been nowhere for the new cars to drive when cars became popular. In addition, bicyclists created the concept of road signs. The first road signs were for bicycles, pointing out hazards that could cause accidents, such as streetcar tracks the wheels could be stuck in. Now, all road signs are for motorists, excluding the occasion “Bike Lane” sign. These newly paved roads and newly constructed road signs lead to the creation of road administrations like the USA’s Federal Highway Administration in 1893 (Transport Canada was created late in comparison to the equivalent in other nations in 1935). These road administrations now deal with primarily automobiles, and perform important tasks like maintaining and constructing roads and…show more content…
Just as the bicycle once paved the way for cars, the car is now pushing bikes off the road, in the figurative and literal sense. There’s the issue of space. A road is only so wide and once buildings have been built on either side, one can’t exactly make the road wider. Putting in a bicycle lane takes away a lane from cars, so proposals to do so are often met with protest. The alternate is no bike lane, but this quickly causes problems for the bicyclists. If there’s an accident the person on the bicycle is going to be the one who gets
Open Document