Everyone Has 'Car Brain'

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Francis Curzon, born in 1884 and later named the fifth Earl Howe, loved a souped-up Bugatti. And he loved to drive fast. He was famous for his "great skill and daring" on the racetrack, and also, eventually, for crashing into pedestrians--knocking down a boy in Belfast, Northern Ireland; slamming into a horse-drawn cart and killing a peasant in Pesaro, Italy. These incidents (and 10 more) were recounted in a 1947 polemic by J. S. Dean, chair of the Pedestrians' Association in England.