> Despite the name “automobile” these vehicles had no autocontrol circuits; control, such as it was, was exercised second by second for hours on end by a human being peering out through a small pane of dirty silica glass, and judging unassisted and often disastrously his own motion and those of other objects. In almost all cases the operator had no notion of the kinetic energy stored in his missile and could not have written the basic equation. Newton’s Laws of Motion were to him mysteries as profound as the meaning of the universe. Nevertheless millions of these mechanical jokes swarmed over our home planet, dodging each other by inches or failing to dodge.
[1] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/162796/looking-for...