ABSTRACT
A culture of control had, in this case, many meanings. Regulations represented not only an expression of the power of the State, an external constraint which imposed itself on drivers, they also expressed political and cultural agreements which were not fully settled before the 1920s. The adoption of legal rules for car traffic was accompanied by a process of negotiation which was characteristic of the political culture of the country. Elected bodies, public administrators and justice officials competed for the elaboration of formal legal decisions. Lobbies and social groups strove hard to make their interests respected, especially within the new set of rules concerning the use of the road. Drivers, too, had to incorporate in their behavior such new obligations. The corpus of regulations was not only an abstract set of texts but also a set of manners, values, and moral constraints, all of them infiltrating into the intimate life and private sphere of contemporaries’ existence. Thus, the culture of control connected with the rise of ‘automobility’ was determined by political choices as well as by social arbitration, and was related to the habitus of members of different social groups, the representation they had of themselves, their gender status, and other elements intimately connected with cultural behavior.
