The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Free-Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads 7
floor with a loaded tray. Of course the proximate causes of customer
dissatisfaction are uncooked meat or food in their laps. Yet
how can these factors be blamed, while the part of restaurant
management is ignored? It is the restaurant manager’s job to
insure that the ovens are performing satisfactorily, and that the
floors are properly maintained. If he fails, the blame rests on his
shoulders, not on the ovens or floors. We hold the trigger man
responsible for murder, not the bullet.
The same holds true with highways. It may well be that
speed and alcohol are deleterious to safe driving; but it is the
road manager’s task to ascertain that the proper standards are
maintained with regard to these aspects of safety. If unsafe conditions
prevail in a private, multi-story parking lot, or in a shopping
mall, or in the aisles of a department store, the entrepreneur
in question is held accountable. It is he who loses revenue unless
and until the situation is cleared up. It is logically fallacious to
place the blame for accidents on unsafe conditions, while ignoring
the manager whose responsibility it is to ameliorate these factors.
It is my contention that all that is needed to virtually eliminate
highway deaths is a non-utopian change, in the sense that it
could take place now, even given our present state of knowledge,
if only society would change what it can control: the institutional
arrangements that govern the nation’s highways.
ANSWERING THE CHARGE “IMPOSSIBLE”
Before I explain how a fully free market in roads might function,
it appears appropriate to discuss the reasons why such a
treatment is likely not to receive a fair hearing.
A fully private market in roads, streets, and highways is
likely to be rejected out of hand, first because of psychological
reasons. The initial response of most people goes something as
follows:
Why, that’s impossible. You just can’t do it. There would be millions
of people killed in traffic accidents; traffic jams the likes of
which have never been seen would be an everyday occurrence;