Killing with a car costs $1.6M, California requires drivers to carry $30K
This article explores the history of US automobile liability laws, noting that current minimum insurance requirements have failed to keep pace with inflation. It argues that the financial responsibility model established in the 1920s is outdated and insufficient for modern economic realities.
Why it matters
It highlights a systemic failure in consumer protection and legal accountability regarding traffic fatalities and damages.
In June 1922, Baltimore put up a 25-foot obelisk in Courthouse Plaza inscribed to the 130 children killed by drivers in the city the year before. Cities across the country were doing versions of this. The dead were overwhelmingly pedestrians and overwhelmingly young, and people had not yet grown accustomed to this fatal risk in their communities.
Cincinnati tried to do something about it. A citizens’ committee spent 1922 gathering signatures to put an ordinance on the ballot requiring every automobile operating inside the city to carry a mechanical governor physically limiting it to 25 miles per hour. Car dealers and the auto clubs organized against it. The measure lost 92,427 to 14,012 (87%-13%) . Cincinnati recorded 103 traffic deaths the year of the vote, 157 by 1929, and 201 by 1934.
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