If anyone could produce half a shred of evidence of that I might have some sympathy. In the meantime, in the real world, we have self-driving car companies working out how best to work around pedestrians and cyclists, councils all over the country working out how best to make life easier for cyclists and pedestrians and make life more difficult for drivers - by increasing parking restrictions, reducing speed limits, introducing pedestrianised areas - and a government which shortly before it shot itself in the foot published a strategy aiming to make walking and cycling "the natural choice".
Making life easier for people who don't happen to be in a car is easy, cheap, saves money and reduces pollution. All of which even the current shower of ludicrous incompetents quite like doing. And anything that's not easy won't happen. Unless the sainted Jeremy suddenly decides he's against cycling and will whip his party to support the government? Even I don't think he's that silly.
Of course they want us out of the way, that's how it's been for nearly a century.
The dominance of our cityscapes was established early on in the life of the motorcar. In the early 1920s, manufacturers and motoring organisations had editorials published in newspapers calling for pedestrians who crossed roads in front of cars to be called jays, a term for a country bumpkin or simpleton.
They lobbied both local government and police and succeeded with the enactment of legislation in Los Angeles in 1925, criminalising pedestrians who impeded motor traffic. This invented offence was known as jaywalking, a name which is still bandied about today, even in jurisdictions (such as the UK) where no such offence exists although its pejorative intent is still clear. This spread across the country and quickly created the environment where the car was king and those on foot were sidelined.
Since then we have continued to develop and build our cities around car use, creating swathes of no-go areas for people walking. We have large radius corners and junctions so that the motorist loses as little speed as possible negotiating them. At the same time, this creates enormous divides at natural crossing points, meaning the vulnerable pedestrian is in the roadway for far longer than necessary.
Where controlled crossing are provided, they are often well away from established desire lines, corralled by lengthy fencing to force walkers into longer journeys, longer waits. The crossing time allowed is impossibly short for a great many people, favouring the throughput of motor traffic over the pedestrian.
All this has been achieved by those who had, and still have, a financial interest in dominating the roads and streets. It would be naïve to think that what went on nearly 100 years ago isn't going on today and on a far grander scale.
