| Despite high costs relative to the incomes of the | | | | calm and subjects them to an all pervading |
| time, car sales rose steadily in the 1900s. So | | | | anxiety. |
| much so, in fact, that manufacturers struggled to | | | | At the moment one car carries on average 1.3 |
| meet demand and new manufacturers | | | | passengers and it uses up a road area of 150 |
| proliferated. | | | | square metres at 100 kmph, with the braking |
| Although conceived initially as a personal mode of | | | | distance and all round safety distances factored in. |
| transport, the motor vehicle found an increasingly | | | | Statisticians have calculated that when car use |
| important commercial niche. Lorries and trucks | | | | increases at its present rate, and every adult on |
| rolled of production lines in increasing numbers | | | | the planet ends up owning a car, then required |
| even while private cars remained a status symbol | | | | road space will exceed the Earth’s total |
| for the wealthy. At the time, possession of a car | | | | surface area around 2050. In the poet Heathcote |
| was a coda for personal success. Even so, by | | | | William’s memorable phrase: Autogeddon. |
| 1914 there were already 55,000 cars on the road | | | | Viewed in this light it is clear that present trends |
| in Germany alone (and 9,000 lorries and vans). | | | | cannot continue and that car use as we know it |
| Additionally there were 25,000 motor bikes. | | | | will die out. Alexander Spoerl has described cars |
| However the rise of the motor was not greeted | | | | as the dinosaurs of our time. However until the |
| with universal enthusiasm but rather with some | | | | world’s favourite mode of transport ausstirbt |
| enmity. The “conquest of the road” was | | | | (dies out) |
| perceived as a matter of life and death. This | | | | Autoversicherung (car insurance) is still a |
| attitude is reflected in a book written at the time | | | | necessary expenditure. Happily, the impact of this |
| by the German writer Herman Glaser in his book | | | | can be offset by comparing providers through the |
| Maschinenwelt und Alltagsleben: | | | | medium of an online Preisvergleich and since |
| Whilst, on the one hand, the motorists can relish | | | | awareness of environmental factors has reached |
| the feeling of freedom and power of their | | | | a sort of “critical mass” it is likely that |
| vehicles as they race along the highways, most | | | | those drivers will be rewarded in the future who |
| people are left in a state of fear and anxiety in | | | | run greener cars. |
| the face of a development which robs them of | | | | |