MANNERS & MORALS: The Last Traffic Jam

In his long and losing war with machines, modern man has devoted almost as much energy to damning newfangled contraptions as he has to inventing them. He has cursed the power loom, the steam locomotive, the Welsbach mantle, the airplane and the electric shaver with a vehemence calculated to deliver whole generations of mankind to the greasiest fry cooks of nether Hell. But in half a century of blissful self-delusion he has failed to perceive that the family automobile is the most monstrous engine of all.

The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims...