Actually, in the 70s Netherlands was very much a car-first country. The current cycling infrastructure is a very hard won victory, with thousands dead along the way [1].
There used to be no sidewalks. Streets were for people and the occasional horse. Then Henry Ford started making cars. Let's all be glad that we didn't decide to just let pedestrians be mowed down by cars because hey man it's just too hard to start over
Err not just the occasional horse cities had huge numbers of horse drawn vehicles and there shit was a major health problem.
As a sport Horse riding is actually one of the more dangerous ones.