Can anyone identify this children's book from one weird snippet about kerbs?

Cafe Society
1

I don’t know why this is bugging me, but it is. When I was a child, some time in the 1980s, I remember reading a book. I have no idea what the book was about, but for some reason I remember it had a weird explanation for kerbs at the side of roads.

I think it equated cars with vicious animals, or that they had at one time been sentient, and they had to be hemmed in with high stone walls in order to keep them on the road. Over time, the cars had got used to being on the road, and the walls were able to be reduced in height, so that the low kerbs we have nowadays are the result.

That sounds totally weird now I’ve written it, and I’m sure it was not in any way central to the plot, but does this ring a bell with anyone?

2

I was just trying to find the name of this book, and the only relevant page I found was me asking the same question more than three years ago. So… bump?

3

I did some googling and also came up with nothing.

Though your story does sound familiar. I don’t remember any curbs but I remember reading a short book about cars in the future becoming sentient and they kind of take over and pave most of the world and just endlessly drive around.

I don’t remember the name of it though and google was no help there either.