DETERMINISMO HISTÒRICO? (Eh eh...)

Car ownership was to increase spectacularly in the next two decades (1950-1970). In Britain (...) it doubled in each decade from 1950 to 1980. From two and a quarter million vehicles in 1950, car ownership had risen to 8 million by 1964, and reached 11,5 million by the end of the Sixties. (...) In France, car ownership rose from less than two million to neraly six million vehicles in the course of the 1950's, then doubled again in the next ten years. Simptomatically, parking meters were introduced at the end of the 1950's.

Local response to this inovation followed historical precedent: English motorists, regarding meter charges as a form of unauthorized taxation, withheld payment. The French registered their disapproval by decapitating Parisian meters.

Postwar, p. 340, Tony Judt