Mellon Forum: The Rise of the Modern Traffic Rule: Building a Legal Infrastructure of “Common Sense”
Eva Vaillancourt, Princeton-Mellon Fellow; Susanna Blumental, University of Minnesota Law School
Wed, 10/29 · 12:00 pm—1:15 pm · School of Architecture
Humanities Council; Princeton-Mellon Initiative
Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment // INFRASTRUCTURE AND DIFFERENCE
When modern automobiles first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, they threw long-established patterns of street movement into chaos. With practically no rules to guide or constrain drivers, violent death on the roads became terrifyingly common. Over the next several decades, administrators created new tools to meet this crisis: the red light, the stop sign, the speed limit… rules they liked to call “codified common sense.”
