From Patton's memoir:

We were very nearly killed by a bull-cart, which came out of a side street so that the pole missed us only by about an inch. The American soldier is absolutely incapable of enforcing the rule that civilians stay off the roads during active operations. His goodness of heart is a credit to him, but I am sure it has cost us many casualties. In war, time is vital, and bull-carts cause waste of time and therefore death.

If I were to fight another war, I would make it an inflexible rule that no civilian vehicle, horse, cow, or motor-drawn, appear on any axial road, and I would enforce this by shooting the animals and destroying the vehicles. I did this in Sicily and was criticized by an ignorant press, who considered it very brutal to kick a few donkeys off bridges, and ignored the fact that by so doing we took Palermo in one day and at very low cost. Again, during the Saar battle, through the co-operation of the local authorities, we kept all the axial roads, including those in the city of Nancy, cleared for our use.