Watch this video ad-free and sponsor-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-would-you-fall-for-it-st08 In the 1950s, the US automobile industry was lobbying hard to get more funding for roads and highways. Part of this effort included propaganda targeted to the general public. In this video, I look back at one of these automobile industry propaganda videos, "Give Yourself the Green Light" by General Motors, and show what was promised versus what the reality is today for American cities. The automobile industry got everything they wanted, but the problems they were trying to solve only got worse. Patreon: https://patreon.com/notjustbikes Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/notjustbikes Mastodon: @notjustbikes@notjustbikes.com NJB Live (my bicycle livestream channel): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9v57F4xz46KaDsvWfCv8yw --- References & Further Reading If you'd like to watch the whole film, you can watch my cleaned-up/upscaled version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXQayNKrj_Y Or watch the original on archive.org: Give Yourself the Green Light General Motors Corporation, Department of Public Relations https://archive.org/details/0542_Give_Yourself_the_Green_Light_05_01_03_28 To learn more about Strong Towns, visit https://strongtowns.org/ or watch my Strong Towns series of videos here:    • Strong Towns   https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-the-truth-about-american-cities-strong-towns-st01 https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-how-suburban-development-makes-american-cities-poorer-st02 https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-why-american-cities-are-broke-the-growth-ponzi-scheme-st03 https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-how-bankrupt-american-cities-stay-alive-debt-st04 https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-the-ugly-dangerous-and-inefficient-stroads-found-all-over-the-us-canada-st05 https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-the-wrong-way-to-set-speed-limits-st06 https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-suburbia-is-subsidized-heres-the-math-st07 Segregation by Design: https://www.segregationbydesign.com/ https://www.instagram.com/segregation_by_design/ https://twitter.com/SegByDesign State Motor Vehicle Registrations, by years, 1900 https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf The gas tax chart was sourced from this classic article by Strong Towns: Some Perspective on the Gas Tax https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/7/24/some-perspective-on-the-gas-tax.html This video contains content licensed from Getty Images