Americans Shouldn’t Have to Drive, but the Law Insists on It - The Atlantic

The automobile took over because the legal system helped squeeze out the alternatives.

“As I detail in a forthcoming journal article, over the course of several generations lawmakers rewrote the rules of American life to conform to the interests of Big Oil, the auto barons, and the car-loving 1 percenters of the Roaring Twenties. They gave legal force to a mind-set—let’s call it automobile supremacy...