It sounds all too familiar to historian Peter Norton, a professor at the University of Virginia who wrote "Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City." The book covers a similar period of social turbulence when automobiles were first seen on city streets. "It's a new version of an old problem," Norton said. "It's the same clash between people who say 'we have to restrict these crazy drivers and their machines,' and people who say 'progress is about changing how we do things.'"