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[quote=Codee]I am not sure "travel" is the way to go. Here are some cites concerning "Passage." I also look to freedom instead of rights.
People v. County of Marin (1894), 103 Cal. 223, 231-232.
City of St. Louis v. Western Union Telegraph Co. (1892), 148 U.S. 92, 37 L.Ed. 380, 13 S.Ct. 485.
Parsons v. The City and County of San Francisco (1863), 23 Cal. 426, 463.
Raymond v. Hill (1914), 168 Cal. 473
I am willing to bet that the 1863 decision had nothing to do with drivers licenses, and I doubt that the two decisions from the 1890s did either (back then automobiles were still rarities and hardly anyone drove one far, fast, or without his own toolkit).
The 1914 case dealt with whether a pedestrian had been contributorily negligent when he was struck by a car because he had tried to cross the road (this evidently before jaywalking laws). Held, "it is manifest that the amount of that care by law exacted of the driver of a motor vehicle is far greater than the amount exacted of foot passengers [= pedestrians]." Raymond v. Hill (1914) 168 Cal. 473, 143 Pac. 743.
(In case somebody wants to fantasize about what is meant by "driver", the fact recital makes it clear that the motorist was piloting his own car with his wife as a passenger, clearly not a "commercial" event.)
The replacement of the horse as a mode of urban transportation by the automobile necessitated new restrictions on the person doing the steering. There were very definite limits to the sort of damage a horse would do no matter how blind/drunk/senile/stupid the person holding the reins. The elimination of the horse from the transporation equation removed (at least) half of the brains that had been controlling the vehicle, and put all of the responsibility onto the person at the steering wheel.
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