If americans do, as i say embrace the automobile culturally, how do they respond when by the 1920s and really it was it wasnt million the 1920s where it wasnt until the 1920s where there was a National Human cry over unavoidable automobile accidents that are killing individuals and particularly pedestrians who have nothing to do with the freedoms of driving. Others were paying for the liberties of these drivers. When the car was first introduced, the rule was very different, and the reaction to those rules were very different. And so the study looks at 900 to 1940 1900 to 1940, a period of time where there werent uniform rules for driving and universal signs for speed limits and grade crossings and what have you. And so that created in a sense a National Dialogue over the difference between our love for automobiles and the social responsibility we have as drivers of automobiles. In the first internal Combustion Engine automobile, it dates back to the 1870s in germany. And as a result, most of the early imports of the internal combustion automobile are luxury automobiles available for only the richest of americans. What really defines american automobility is the arrival of the Ford Motor Company. To be fair, there were other cheaper automobiles available, but henry fords model t and mass production through the Ford Motor Company make around 1908 1909 mass produced, inexpensive automobiles available for every man. One of the aspects of the model t which is really telling for the issue of safety is that that vehicle was capable of driving on the worst roads and in the worst conditions. It could be modified by most anyone who had basic mechanical skills which in the 19 teens was a lot of people and could be modified as well to do a lot of different tasks. Not simply driving but also as a threshing machine, as a source of power in rural environments. So its versatility was really the calling card of these mass produced inexpensive automobiles. Reforms often tried to limit the very function of what an automobile does. And what i mean by that is its ability to access all parts of ones life, its ability to be driven in urban locations and so there were all kinds of restrictions in terms of driving within a city limit, within a town limit. Those efforts really were ones geared at, initially, the way in which americans drove and who had the right to drive. But it wasnt an easy question. And one of the, again one of the elements that i tried to pick up on in this study is theres an indetermine nance, theres an unanswered question between freedom and safety that is exposed by mass automobility. I begin the book with an epigraph from sin lair Lewis Sinclair lewis who is the First American to win a nobel prize for literature and most americans if they know lewis will know him from babbitt, and whos babbitt . Hes this middle class, pompous individual who sees the car as a privilege. Sees the car as something that is due him, and mechanics are greasy individuals who are serving him and pedestrians are in the way of this kind of champion driving throughout the city. Ironically enough, three years before he writes babbitt Sinclair Lewis goes on an automotive trip across the country. He writes for the saturday evening post and in three long essays he adores the car, he adores the freedoms. He is, ironically enough, standing in for babbitt and yet making an argument that here is a device that is going to fulfill all of the modern expectations for personal freedom. His wife loves it because she can drive, and women are quick adapters to these automobiles. You can go out into the countryside and see a country that has yet to be developed for the first time. Certainly, the railroads would allow that freedom within the structure of a fixed rail system what the automobile did was to allow people like Sinclair Lewis and others to take that device, take that tool and to accentuate their individual freedom. In the 1920s as the automobile sent crisis appears accident crisis appears and, again, its existed for some time it becomes a national issue. The states become very active. Here in texas theyre quite active in finding ways in which to respond to the motor menace. In the 1920s during the administration of president coolidge Herbert Hoover is tasked as secretary of the interior of trying to to pull together these state initiatives and mandates. And in the mid 1920s, the Hoover Commission does a remarkable job of standardizing and really thats the key component with automobile safety standardizing expectations for manufacturing, expectations for road design standardizing expectations for grade crossings where railroads and roads intersected, how those transitions were going to be governed. And so the government plays an Important Role at the federal state and local level beginning in the 1920s. Before that the federal government is going to be much more important for funding Road Development and road improvement. And what you see is not really a growth in the mileage of roads but an improvement of the miles that existed. What they do is, quite honestly borrow from industry. And industry has been concerned with safety for 20 years by the 1920s, if not longer. These industrial Safety Experts are going to, are going to focus on the three es of reform; education, engineering and enforcement. Education is preparing drivers to, for the complexities of the roadway. Not only, you know weather conditions, but also rules of the road the ability to drive a much more complex piece of equipment than what we consider today in an automobile. An automobile today we turn the key, and we drive. Put some gas in it and drive. Its a much more complex device. And so education was seen as a way in which to limit particularly young people who have a desire to drive, limit their access to the road and to, in essence, force those who are habitual violaters or have repeat accidents or drunk driving and what not to be held accountable through state apparatus, through Education Programs etc. Engineering, by contrast, really focuses on perfecting the device itself. Safety components, there was an intense debate about seat belts. There is a debate in terms of how fast these cars should be allowed to go. Even today you get into a passenger automobile, and the speedometer often exceeds any posted splint even here in texas. Speed limit even here in texas and that focus is going to really standardize the automobile and the roads in which they drove over. By all accounts in both instances although one could quibble about education theyre successful. The challenge became enforcement. And i go back to that speedometer. Why is it that a personal piece of property can, is built to break the law . Why is it possible to buy legally radar detectors . Back when i started driving in the 70s, it was possible to discan disengage the seat belt monitors. And to take it even further, why today do we have mandatory seat belt laws do we have zero tolerance for drug and alcohol use . The answer to that is that the enforcement question has not been effectively brought into american culture. It really does kind of play against the idea of the automobile as a symbol of freedom. And so they struggled with that. Government reformers are trying to get people to recognize that speeding and drunk driving are not a right or a privilege but rather an imminent menace. In the 20s and 30s you see an effort on the part of states to beef up their motorized traffic police. Again, here in texas the department of Public Safety is founded. Theres an interesting sort of dynamic in place because the state police, to that point had generally been texas rangers. Texas rangers do a very different thing other than, you know, traffic stops and speed violations. And so there is an internal tension in terms of how to enforce. What you generally see in the cities is a Police Department that is tasked with a herculean job. Because you have more and more drivers in a denser environment. There are numerous campaigns and youll see these images of Police Officers going car to car and literally inspecting the automobiles, talking to drives gathering information about what kind of menace theyre dealing with. And so i think in regards to how did they respond to this, they saw the problem and reacted. The irony was the Sticking Point was enforcement. Generally, the automobile response was positive. They didnt want to kill their customers, and they certainly didnt want to see themselves as feeding an addiction to speed or to recklessness. Having said that, what sold cars . What sold cars in their businesses, theyre capitalists theyre making must be. What sold theyre making money. What sold cars was a promise of freedom, a promise of speed, a notion of excitement. You still see it in the automobile advertisements today. You know . Sitting there watching these commercials with my family, i always have to point out notice how all the streets are empty . When you see these cars driving theyre driving and having a wonderful time whereas reality today, again, is much more complex. We dont usually have wide open roads when were driving in a commute time. But the automobile manufacturers, to their credit saw this as particularly in the 1920s and 30s as a major impediment to expanding their marketplace. They were concerned about government regulation. It was possible for a state or municipality to demand speed governors. The technology was this to keep an internal combustion was there to keep an internal Combustion Engine from creating enough speed for an automobile, could keep it well below 40 miles an hour there were devices, curious devices that would light lightbulbs when a car passed the espressossed speed limit. Speedspeed limit. The technology of our vehicles today is smart enough to know how fast were going but it opens up similar questions about our own willingness to give away personal freedom at the expense of social safety. And really that is at the heart of this book, is this question between independence and individualism versus the social responsibility that comes with that. Once youre talking about commuting, once youre talking about just the density of automobiles on our roadways, the idea of and the nature of the car itself all of the support structures for what i define as the love affair, this kind of progressive pride i have no pride in my ability to turn the start key of my automobile. It just, it just gets me from point a to point b. By the 1950s, if not sooner but certainly by the 1950s and 60s that postmodern reality is starting to sink in. And a lot of, im a cultural historian, a lot of study and work has gone into what does that mean culturally for instances of Technology Like the automobile which is so risk it carries with it such a risk for others who are around there. Gibbons and beck have written in the last decade on the risk society, and to boil it, to net it out is throughout most of Human History most human beings were concerned with food clothing and shelter. We have very material needs. For the most part, most in western societies dont have those needs anymore. We arent going to starve, or we have, you know, an ability to talk care of all those material needs. As a result more esoteric concerns start factoring in, ip including pass including passive secondhand cigarette smoke, including post9 11 terrorist attacks, including automobiles and drunk drivers. So bringing it back to automobiles, its no consequence. I should say its no coincidence that beginning in the 1970s and 1980s you see americans starting to focus on not those material needs, but rather saying were going to have zero tolerance for those who are drinking and driving. Mothers against drunk driving passive restraint. Theres increasingly a lot of technology being built into the automobile. Its not there by accident. Its there to provide some evidence and arguably the ability to predict and to prevent automobile accidents in the future. And while in Corpus Christi we spoke with Robert Wooster author of American Military frontiers, which explores the various roles the American Military has played in americas westward expansion. When people think of the American Military and the west they think quite naturally of fighting indians. And theres good reason because there were over 1100 combat actions between the army and American Indians during this period. So theres frequent combat. And thats a key role in the story. But there are other things that many people dont really understand. In the 19th century, the federal governments very limited. They dont have many deployable resources. And so the army does a whole variety of things. Theyre discoverers, theyre explorers. Army contracts are an important part of the western economy. The army plays a role in conservation. In the recent ken burns series on the development of American National parks it points out that the parks were established in the 19th century, but there was no one to protect them or preserve them or keep trespassers away or to keep hunters off of them. And so the army, really because of the efforts of Phil Sheridan the commanding general at the time, the army steps in and literally is saves the national and literally saves the National Parks until another organization can be created. For better or worse, the army in the west did much more than just fight indians. The more than people have historically had an antipathy a fear of the regular army from our english traditions, really, and revolutionary war traditions. We fear a Standing Army as antithetical to liberty. Again, its hard for modern observers to to kind of realize because now the militarys one of the most trusted institutions in the United States. But that wasnt wasnt the case in the 19th century. And so the army really even as late as the 1870s the armys about 25,000 men. It has a lot of jobs to do, and so the army would argue were too spread out. And the army would argue or the army would have argued at the time that they dont have nearly enough men to do the things theyre supposed to do as effectively and as efficiently as they could have. But the American People again, didnt see it that way. Although they certainly welcomed the armys presence in those cases. The army is often placed in the middle of two competing interests. For example, the army sees itself, often sees itself as being in the middle of American Indians and nonindians who want to take that indian land. But it goes beyond just the indian nonindian issue. For example, in the 1880s in wyoming of all places there are some riots where local workers are opposed to the introduction of chinese immigrants who are coming to do various tasks. And the army gets called in to restore order to. And theres this wonderful scene in the book where you have the chinese consul from san francisco, the chinese consul from new york, a translator and two Army Officers meeting in rock springs wyoming trying to protect the chinese immigrants trying to restore order. And so the armys placed in all sorts of difficult balancing acts. And sometimes it does pretty well. Sometimes it bungles the job, unfortunately. This is at wounded knee. Over 200 indian men women children are slaughtered. Now, there were about 30 Army Soldiers killed as well. But its one of those tragedies that didnt need to happen and just a horrible example of things gone wrong and the needless thought or of hundreds of non slaughter of hundreds of noncombatants. I guess i would argue that although the last major indian conflict ends in 1890 that the army continued to see the west as fundamental importance to its mission really until the spanishamerican war. That we know with the advantage of hindsight that there are no major conflicts with the indians after 1890. But Army Officers at the time are sure talking about the possibility of those conflicts. And so the army remains heavily involved in the west really up until the spanishamerican war when ironically it quickly finds itself in a somewhat analogous position in the philippines. Here again theyre called upon to try to not only conquer an area, but then to try to provide law and order and provide some sense of order and stability. And so in many ways the experience in the philippines very similar to what many of them had undergone in the west. In many cases this love hate relationship that westerners have with the federal government is reflected in their dealings with the army. And against this this is nothing new. We still have it today. I happened to be in washington, d. C. At the beginnings of the modern Day Tea Party movement. And it was fascinating to me, and im not trying to this is not a policy issue its just fascinating as an observer to watch the tea partiers go on the metro, the washington metro system which, of course, was funded largely by federal dollars that i thought it was ironic that the tea partiers were going to their demonstrations opposing the federal government on this creation of the federal government. And they didnt see an irony in that. I saw the irony at least. Westerners kind of take the same attitude, very much that same attitude. That on the one hand, in theory they dislike the government. They dont want the government. But when they want the governments help theyre more than happy to accept it. And so again typically, westerners are more supportive of the army and congress than nonwesterners in the 19th century. You can see clear patterns where western congressmen who are traditionally opposed to the federal government vote for bigger Army Appropriations in part because they want those soldiers