The person I was replying to didn't talk about highways. They talked about car-dependence and the death of the pedestrian-first street. That happened with car d

The person I was replying to didn't talk about highways. They talked about car-dependence and the death of the pedestrian-first street. That happened with car drivers killing people and scaring the rest into yielding the street, and government then formalizing that to avoid literal deaths. That is to say, the market decided that cars went first and fuck everyone else. Highways were not the first roads where cars drove out people. The first roads where that happens were just city roads when cars started proliferating. It's almost like the private, selfish choices of people can lead to negative outcomes for all of society.