Yes, but carts and horses don't habitually move at 25 MPH or more. It was possible to get run over and killed by a cart, but walking into a busy city street full of cars (without following the signals) is almost certain to get you killed. That's a pretty big difference in how the space can actually be used.
To be fair, millions of horses in the streets would cause a lot of pollution in the form of horse dung. Streets would be mired in horse crap... And what would you do with it, if you removed it? Some could be used as fertilizer, but not all. Woe are us after the rains...
> walking into a busy city street full of cars (without following the signals) is almost certain to get you killed
This is total nonsense, easily falsified by just looking at daily urban life in the modern world. The behavior you describe is completely routine in Shanghai; deaths are rare.
This is total nonsense, easily falsified by just looking at daily urban life in the modern world. The behavior you describe is completely routine in Shanghai; deaths are rare.
The Chinese appear to disagree:
Shanghai traffic police have punished 350,000 cases of pedestrian jaywalking this year.... There have been more than 200 crashes involving pedestrians that have killed 56 people as a result of ignoring traffic signals in Shanghai this year, traffic police said. (2012)[1]
and
According to Shanghai traffic police, 48 people have been killed and 206 injured in more than 200 accidents in the first 5 months of 2013, involving either jaywalking or scooters and mopeds running red lights[2]
The first section of this article is interesting in this context: http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history