Today in 1926, a small-town Nebraska newspaper ran a cartoon called "June Bugs." A road map littered with cars swarming everywhere. It was meant to be charming — a lighthearted nod to the summer driving season and the automobile craze sweeping the country.

But it also captured something else entirely. Something much more grim. Something I’ve explored once before.

By 1926 the car had won. Not gradually, not partially — completely. American cities were literally being rebuilt around the automobile. Streets that had belonged to pedestrians, horses, and streetcars were becoming highways. Zoning laws, road design, and municipal budgets were all bending toward the car with a speed that nobody had quite planned for.

The numbers were staggering. In just a few years, the ratio of cars to people had skyrocketed from roughly one car for every twenty Americans to one car for every six. Today? That ratio is 1:1 👀

The June Bug cartoon was the cheerful version of the story. But the data earlier that year, told the darker side.

North Dakota published a chart that same year tracking auto registrations, gas tax revenue, and auto deaths from 1917 to 1925. The registrations line went up sharply. The gas tax line followed. And the auto deaths line — the dotted one at the bottom of the chart in 1917 — just took off. Way more deaths per car as the roads filled up, the speeds increased, and the infrastructure and driver experience failed to keep pace with any of it.

No seatbelts. No standardized driver training. No speed limits that anyone enforced consistently. Cars were getting faster, roads were getting busier, and the law was decades behind.

So 1926 asked the obvious question. Who was to blame?

I mean women just cannot catch a break. Or reach the brakes apparently…

The Virginian Pilot carried a wire service item from Rome reporting that Italy's Minister of Justice had sent a circular to courts across the country demanding severe penalties for negligent drivers. A recent government inquiry, the paper reported, had determined the primary cause of the accident epidemic. Inexperienced drivers. Mostly women. Speeding through congested traffic without regard to danger and without keeping in the proper direction.

The car had arrived. And blame for the astronomical auto-death-toll was going to everything but the cars themselves. The U.S. was blaming pedestrians. Italy was blaming women.

My take? We can probably thank Henry Ford for that (among a whole host of other issues if you’re not familiar with the man I’ve come to know as “the most famous man nobody knows anything about”).

Let me know where you’re reading from today in the comments!

See you tomorrow

-Chris

Sources
Gordon Journal, June 17, 1926. Fargo Forum, March 4, 1926. Virginian Pilot, August 28, 1926.