The Road Slaughter
Lord Lucas, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, told the House of Lords on Tuesday that the Govern- ment hoped shortly to be able " to introduce regulations that will give embodiment to the best advice and the best scientific practice at our command." He produced this comprehensive (and some- what imprecise) promise after A debate in Which a number of peers had produced comprehensive (and sometimes imprecise) nostrums for dealing with the appalling slaughter that goes on, day in and day out, on the roads. It is hard by now to produce an original remedy ; special traffic courts, compulsory use of pedestrian cross- ings, fiercer prison sentences, road-worthiness tests for vehicles and so on, have all been sponsored for many years. But none of them have been tried. Lord Reading pointed out with a certain amount of justice that, for all its feverish activity, the Government had passed no legislation dealing with road accidents in the past five years. Most people would be prepared to wait for "the best advice" if they thought it,was going to do any good ; most people, It may be added, would in this one particular be prepared to risk too many regulations (properly enforced) rather than too few. Five thousand people are killed on the roads each year and 'nearly a quarter of a million are injured. This is a grotesque, a terrible, state of affairs. Almost anything is worth trying to remedy it.
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