I imagine it's a problem of creep as well. In 40 years, we've added a touch over 3 billion people to the planet. That's nearly double the population in under o

I imagine it's a problem of creep as well. In 40 years, we've added a touch over 3 billion people to the planet. That's nearly double the population in under one lifetime. Everyone alive then and born within the next 24 years of 1983 are all old enough to own and operate a motor vehicle today. Roughly 2/3 of the population is 16+. Just assuming that holds throughout history (and it probably doesn't, but for argument's sake let's pretend), there were about 3 billion potential vehicles then and 5 billion now. (Using 4.5b and 7.5b for the population counts for easier math. The real totals are a bit over). We've nearly doubled the number of potential cars on the road. But we didn't do that overnight. We did that over 40 years. And every 5 years or so, it may seem reasonable to make a few more adjustments for car infrastructure. Until we're here, today. And it's not until we look back that we see how much we've given over to car infrastructure at the expense of everything else.