-
People died. A lot. Ralph Nader, who is today probably better known for being a former presidential candidate for the Green Party in the US, first got famous with his 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed” that brought just how dangerous cars were to the public attention. Which led to a ton of laws that regulated the manufacture and operation of motor vehicles. It was similar to how Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was with the food industry.
-
Density has increased. It was easier to get away with driving when there were fewer cars on the road, fewer intersections, fewer buildings and other property nearby. Our signs and signals have grown more complicated. I live in a major US city, where there is a main thoroughfare that cuts through the southern suburbs with a 5 lane stroad (2 lanes each way with a central turning lane). There are traffic lights every couple hundred feet to allow interesections with feeder roads. My grandfather still tells the stories about how when he was a teenager, that was a 3-lane DIRT road, where the center was still a turn lane. He could drive for miles before getting to the densest part of the city where there was 1 traffic light.
He also tells the story of how the police radios used to only be one-way, so officers in cars could receive messages from the station but not send anything back. On top of that, their big heavy cruisers were slower and less maneuverable than his motorcycle, so he used to commonly blow by and ignore cops trying to pull him over. It was a completely different world.
palordrolap@fedia.io 22 minutes ago
In some countries there's definitely a catch-all law for this. It's called Driving without due care and attention where I live.
I can imagine that in jurisdictions where the police are more likely to be predatory, retaliatory or have quotas to meet that such a law might be considered too powerful by a judiciary that isn't quite as corrupt, so that could be why such a thing doesn't exist. Assuming that it's true that no such law exists, anyway.