This video was made possible by Hover.
Get 10% off your custom domain by going to hover.com/HAI.
A great man once said, “highways normally have cars on them.”
That great man was me, just now, at the beginning of this video, but while it’s true that
highways are traditionally used by cars, it’s also important to remember that life is a
highway, and that life is unpredictable—which means that by the transitive property, highways
are unpredictable, which may explain how we ended up with the strange, confusing, charmingly
bizarre Michigan road that is M-185: the only highway in America where cars are completely
banned.
Now, you may be wondering, “why would a highway ban cars?
Aren’t cars the whole reason highways exist—for cars to drive on them?
Seriously HAI dude, I don’t get it, I need answers; are you gonna explain what’s going
on here!”
To that I would say, “yeah, obviously I’m going to explain; that’s the whole point
of this channel.
There’s no need to get so aggressive, imaginary viewer who I created.”
Anyways, in order to calm that hypothetical person down, let’s get to explaining.
While most highways go to scary places, like hell or the danger zone, M-185 goes around
beautiful Mackinac Island, a 4.4 square mile, or 11.3 square kilometer island in Lake Huron
that looks like the kind of charming, picturesque small town community that would be rocked
to its core by a grisly murder in a Stephen King novel.
Mackinac Island has many attractions for tourists of all kinds: if you’re into sports, you
can check out their famed golf course, if you like culture, you can visit their renowned
art exhibits, and if you’re afraid of the inevitable takeover of mankind by machines,
you can enjoy the island’s total ban on cars, which has been in place for over 100
years.
You see, back in 1898, the good people of Mackinac became terrified of a strange new-fangled
invention called the automobile—so scared, in fact, that they passed a city ordinance
declaring, “ that the running of horseless carriages be prohibited within the limits
of the village of Mackinac.”
It’s the kind of law that’s funny because it was clearly written in a different, less
enlightened era, like the laws that prohibit buying booze on Sundays, or the Second Amendmn——oh
I should not have said that, I should not have said that.
Anyways, after Mackinac Village outlawed those dastardly horseless carriages, they probably
thought that would be that—but then in 1900, a law-defying rapscallion named Earl C Anthony
brought his Locomobile onto the island, and while driving in Mackinac State Park, he ended
up scaring several horses, which was particularly a problem because those horses were attached
to carriages, and those carriages had people in them, and people in carriages don’t like
crashing into things, which is what tends to happen when the horses they’re attached
to get scared.
So, in 1901, the Mackinac Islands State Park Commission passed a separate law, which banned
all cars from Mackinac Park—which takes up over 80% of the island.
Seeing as the other 20% is taken up by the village, which had banned automobiles three
years prior, that meant that… let me do the math here… eighty plus twenty, carry
the one, add five, subtract five, divide by three, multiply by six, divide by two…that
meant 100% of the island had banned cars.
Yet, despite this ban, from 1900 to 1910, the state of Michigan began building a road
on the island, with the intention of helping people get around using other modes of transportation
that were popular at the time—carriage, horseback, foot, even those stupid giant bicycles.
In fact, the road was intentionally built more narrow than traditional highways, because
the state didn’t intend for cars to drive on it, but you didn’t click on this video
to hear why there’s a road without cars; you clicked on it to learn why there’s a
highway without cars.
Well, that or you fell asleep an hour ago and your computer is autoplaying videos—which
is fine by me; I get ad revenue either way.
The point you’re probably wondering is, “why is this road a highway, instead of
just a regular old road?”
Well, simply put, it’s a highway because the state of Michigan says so.
Highways don’t actually have to meet any sort of technical requirements in order to
be highways; they just have to be designated as such by the state government, and in 1933,
the state of Michigan designated that road as a state highway, which means that it is.
Despite the ban, though, there have been a few instances of cars on the island.
In 1979, Mackinac Island was the filming location for a movie called Somewhere in Time, in which
Christopher Reeves—the first actor to portray Superman—plays a man who falls in love with
a woman based solely on an old photograph of her—so basically, it was a movie about
Tinder.
In the film, Reeves travels back in time to court the woman, and at one point his character
drives an old-timey car, and so a car was allowed on the island for him to drive it,
because you know, it’s hard to say no to Superman.
Just ask Batman.
The next automobile allowed on the island came in 1998, when a car was allowed onto
Mackinac in order to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the automobile ban—which,
you have to admit, is a bit ironic.
That’s like commemorating the anniversary of the drug war by planting weed in the Rose
Garden.
Most recently, in 2019, Vice President Mike Pence brought a motorcade onto the island
for security reasons, and finally, emergency vehicles have always been allowed on the island—in
fact, they were the source of the only ever car crash in the history of Mackinac Island,
which came when the fire truck nicked the door of the ambulance when they were both
responding to an injured ferryboat passenger.
Don’t worry, though—when the crash happened, everyone was alright; there just so happened
to be an ambulance right there.
If you hate all the cars that are around your town and want to start a campaign to get rid
of them, like Mackinac Island did, you might want to launch a website to rally support—maybe
something like ihatecars.com.
Hover is the perfect place to buy that domain.
Seriously, that specific domain is available on hover—at least, it was when I wrote this
video—and there are load of others too, even ones with specialized domain extensions,
like ihate.cars and stoppollutingtheearthbydriving.cars.
Plus, even if you’re not looking to build a website, you can use Hover to get custom
email addresses—they’re cheap, they’re easy, and they make you look professional
every time you send an important email.
I can wholeheartedly endorse them because I personally use Hover for my work email.
So, for award-winning customer support and over 400 domain extensions to choose from,
visit hover.com/hai and save 10% on your first order.