Did we make a cultural mistake popularizing the car?

[Angrboda]

I suspect that the construction of the U.S. highway system toward the end of enabling more interstate commerce via trucks did as much to lead to the popularization of automotive transport as anything. I don't know the story in other countries, but in the U.S., that and the replacement of intra-city rail lines with buses did a lot to drive the development of automotive technology. Personal transport may have simply come along for the ride as a consequence of the scale of, and improvement in technology employed in the above. A war in which motorized transport was critical probably didn't hurt either.