Cities are regulating mobility startups, but ignoring the real problem?there?s still too much space for cars Over the last few months, I?ve spent a lot of time looking at century-old images of U.S. streets. There?s a window of a dozen or so years at the beginning of the 20th century, at the dawn of the automobile age, where American cities were remarkably multimodal?including a wide range of small personal vehicles.
Take, for example, ?A trip down Market Street before the fire,? a film of downtown San Francisco from the era before the 1906 earthquake?and subsequent fire?leveled the city.

About a minute in, a man exits the cable car with a baby and walks, with confidence, across several lanes of traffic navigated by several types of vehicles?propelled by human, horse, and motor?glancing only briefly at the oncoming cable car on which the camera is positioned. People of all ages and abilities, sharing the roadway, moving at human speeds, negotiating around the sometimes erratic paths of other vehicles. When I was reporting a story about urban transportation one year ago, I envisioned future streets that were much like those streets of a century ago, where the wide expanses between our buildings would offer places to explore more options beyond cars.

Everything old is new again. pic.twitter.com/97Ft4Db38h? Autonomous Law (@SafeSelfDrive) April 21, 2018

Little did I know the future was arriving much faster than I envisioned.
As noted by Jim McPherson, a lawyer fo...