Life — July 26, 1923 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This is a humorous comic about urban traffic dangers in the early automobile era. The narrative progresses through six panels showing a pedestrian's increasingly frantic attempts to cross a busy city street while dodging various vehicles—motorcars, taxis, omnibuses, and trolley cars. The joke culminates with the narrator finally meeting his wife "at the wheels of an out-of-date vehicle": a horse-drawn cart. The satire mocks the chaotic, dangerous conditions of modern city traffic, where traditional horse transport has become the safest option by comparison. The cartoon reflects anxieties about rapid motorization and urban congestion in the 1920s-1930s period when automobiles were still relatively new. The ironic punchline suggests that old-fashioned horse transport is paradoxically safer than all the "modern" motorized alternatives crowding city streets.