Motoring The Risks of the Road NOBODY can envy the
Minister of Transport his job. He has, since his elevation to office, displayed the most laudable industry in attempting to reduce the accident rate on the roads and, if one is to judge by figures, with but meagre results. It is over a year since Mr. Hore-Belisha began his campaign against the road-hog and the jay-walker, but, in spite of the devices employed and the measures taken, we are more or less where we were before his " drive."
The figures of the killed and injured go up a little one week and down a little the next, but they remain at best sheerly horrifying, -with uo real tendency towards a. steady decline. One might perhaps comfort oneself in a very small degree by the reflection that while the casualty list in 1936 is so far no heavier than in 1935, the number of fresh cars loosed-upon the roads, many of them under the indifferent control of novices, must have added appreciably tothecongestion and the general risk, but it is cold consolation-to know that the best that can be done with the crossings and the limits and the police-cars
of a year :is to; prevent ;the total froin fNobody expected a cure, but most people hoped for a palliative of a rather 'stronger "CoMplexion. - - I am not sure that they were really justified in -that hope. The fact is that the publication of these disastrous figures, in itself a long:needed action, has tended to create the.iturresSon that the- risks to -life and limb on- the- King's highways and byways , are, not only greater ..than_ anywhere else but more susceptible. of control. The road is ih the news, -put there in all good faith:b3r Government and Press alike and.fOr excellent reason, but -the publicity it receives is sometimes out of pro- portion to the fatalities that i?)eciir on it: We are Shoitly- to have an exhaustive analysis of:the cauiies-of :every accident due to traffic conditions, and high hopes are built on what can be done with the knowledge to be gained from it. We shall, presumably, never have: an analysis of the unreported and quite unspectacular accidents that hiring injury and death into homes all over the country every day of the week, accidents dile tocarelessness at least as culpable as that shown by every tyk ofroadtuSer: People fall downstairs; burn them- selves, slip on greasy pavements to their life-long disablement,
cut themselves; poison themselves,. and in a handred ways roll up a domestic casualty-list that must be at least as heavy as that of the road. We do not hear of these or only when the circumstances are, in the language of the reports,Suill- ciently dramatic.
There is no reason why we should -hear bf them. We have always been familiar with them and we alivays shall lie, in our personal surroundings, but it is as well to remember that for every person who behaves rashly, dangerously or foolishly on the road and brings about an accident, directly or indirectly, there must be at least one other who is equally culpable. . Somebody is careless enough to upset boiling water over himself or somebody else ; another steps in front of a tram or a car without looking first, or drives his car or motor-cycle round a blind corner without warning. The scene and condi- tions are' different, but the results and the causes are the same. People are injured or killed because they or other people have been careless. One example happens indoors, out of sight, and will in all probability never be knonIn outside a very small circle ,• the other happens in the presence of perhaps twenty spectlibrirs and is sure of a detailed report in the papers. While it is true that the domestic disaster has been with us since the beginning:Of time, and that the road variety is new, there is no difference between them after they have happened. Nobody has ever planned a campaign against the everyday folly that costs soiriiich in health and life. It is not perhaps taking too gloo* a view to suggest that-it- would be an egregious failure.
Something, very obviously, has "got to be done about the had, and it *ill 'be time enough when everything has been 'tried to -say That there is no cure. It is tempting to say s0 now, hot so much because the beacons and, police- cars and fines have availed so little as because the standard of driying--geems So appallingly bad. In a good many years' driving in a -good many countries I have never seen such dangerous behaviour as I have seen in the last month, The risks that are taken are incredible as is the escape of those involved. Cutting-in on the wrong side, " shaving," driving too fast on greasy -surface and in bad visibility, overtaking at high speeds, these and a dozen -other notorious crimes are committed hourly wherever traffic is thick. As I watched a marked half-dozen road-hogs- conducting them- selves after the manner of their kind,. I could not help wondering if they ever read print, whether in news- papers, telling the, daily tale of horror" the Code. of the- Road, telling them how to reduce risk,- or -even - warning boards. It seemed unlikely, particularly in the case of the driver who " shot the lights " at the western end of the -Cromwell Road, cut in on the near side of my:waiting _6i: found the apparently unsuspected kerb-corner beyond, missed the man who stepped off it by a hair, skidded across my:bows in the resultant swerve, just without hitting them, grased the refuge in the middle of the road because he knew littkabout steering and less about sway, " revved " up his noisy engine and went on. Even if he had heard 'What was said alx ut him by those present it would probably have 'had no effict on him. And he is only one.
All sorts of ways. of dealing with these people have been suggested, from criminal prosecution to voluntary patrol- work, with volunteers reporting bad cases to the pollee. The latter has always seemed to me the least practical of the lot, the one most open to abuse. I cannot see why the police, any more than any other official body, should welcome amateur assistance, the value of which they have no means of judging.
I make ..my. own suggestion the more diffidently because it has no chance at all of being adopted. I would like to see proper casualty-lists regularly published in all leading papers, exactly as they would be in a war. Full names and addresses of the killed and injured would be printed, with such brief but essential details as might be available. 'I cannot but think that a weekly list of over 100 names of killed and of thousands injured would make some 'impression -on--those who can and do read. They might see the risks of road and street in the right light when they read of somebody they knew being killed. on them.
I would insist specially upon the details of the injuries. For an " injury," may be anything from a broken leg to a scratch, and it. is- possible that the latter -are commoner than the former, though equally " official"
JOHN PRIOLEAU.
[Note.—Readers' requests for advice from oui Motoring Correspondent on the choice of newcars should be accompanied by a stamped and addressed envelope. The highest price .payable must be given, as well as the type. of Brody_ required. No advice can be given on the purchase, sale or exchange of used cars.]
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