ABSTRACT
The many-sided effects of the growing flood of motor cars as the poured on to the poor and limited roads of the early days posed a much greater challenge to historians; far more difficult to analyse and discusses. The history of motor transport can be seen as a subject which stretches far beyond motor car production in a given country, or even just the effects of motor cars. The twelvefold growth of motor vehicles during the last half-century, and the new roads which accompanied it, have brought the process of motorisation to a quite different order of magnitude. The number of these motor vehicles, and the congestion, pollution, safety and other problems the create, are largest in the more developed countries and especially in and around their vast conurbations. But even in the developing parts of the world the growing influence, particularly that of commercial goods vehicles and buses, affects the economic and social life of most people.
