The beginning, and end, of amateur human-driven cars in Phoenix, Arizona


As someone who was born in the middle of the 20th Century, it's very hard for me to imagine a world without amateur human-driven cars, but I often try. I have a good imagination! Today I'd like to time-travel backwards and forwards in Phoenix history. Let's start with the first amateur human-driven car in Phoenix, in 1902.

Phoenix history buffs will recognize that car as belonging to Dr. Swetnam, and you're looking east on Washington towards 1st Avenue. I really don't know what the legal requirements were for operating a vehicle like that in Phoenix in 1902, but I'd imagine that it was mostly if you had enough money to do so. It wasn't like being an engineer on a train, or a driver on the trolley, it really was just you, so it stands to reason that you wouldn't have been expected to be a professional driver.

And if you've lived in Phoenix anytime after 1902 to the present day, I really don't have to tell you what kind of damage these amateur human-driven cars have caused. Even with the most careful engineering of roads, and cars, they tend to run into each other, and crash. People get injured, and people die.

By the time I got to Phoenix, in 1977, the roads were already overcrowded. The chaos on east Bell Road was so bad that I made a point to stay away from there as much as I could. The engineering of both cars and roads have greatly improved since then, but not the amateur driver.

And I've known some extremely excellent drivers in my day. These are people with razor-sharp reflexes, and eyesight, who can weave through the densest traffic imaginable - and do it backwards, with one eye shut. And there are still people like that, and you may be one of them, but the percentage of this type of professional driving expertise is so low that the carnage continues.

So I'm looking forward to the end of amateur driving in Phoenix. No, I don't mean going back to horses (although that would be kinda cool), I mean the only humans behind the wheel are the kind of people who fly airplanes, who pilot helicopters, who drive the big rigs. The rest of the people will not be given the opportunity to cause the type of mayhem that Phoenix, and all other big cities, have grown accustomed to.

I sometimes wonder if I'll live to see that day, and I just might. That is, assuming that some amateur driver doesn't hit me while I'm in the crosswalk!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more