The Killing English Roads
By JOHNARLOTT THREE thousand, nine hundred and ninety-three--one third of all the accidental deaths in England and Wales during 1950—were caused by road accidents. Foes all that we have heard the figure—or something like it—before, it is shocking. Of all the children between the ages of five and ten who died, from any cause whatever, in the same year, almost one quarter were killed on the roads. The proportion is disturbing to anyone; considerably so to drivers; most of all, perhaps, to parents of young children. These figures are what are called' startling facts.' Startling facts' on some subject or other are produced every week until it might perhaps be better to call them merely ' facts.' There is no evidence to show that they startle. To kill a child while driving, that is startling: but too late.
' Consider it possible, I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, that you may be mistaken,' said Oliver Cromwell. His God- fearing listeners were startled into receptivity. The process was easier for Cromwell than for those who would talk to an age for which the word ' shocking' is an attractive adjective in advertisement. Goods transport vehicles kill over 1,500 people every year: three times as many as the same number of motor cars. Mean- while, an interested minority continues to press for the lifting of speed limits on heavy vehicles. While the annual death-rate for other drivers is 1 in 12,000, for motor-cyclists it is 1 in 860; one motor-cyclist in 25 becomes a road casualty every year. Yet motor cycles continue to be built capable of higher and higher speeds and retaining the fittings to the top of the petrol tank which, with horrifying frequency, castrate the riders in what would otherwise be minor accidents.
International comparisons of approach to road-safety prob- lems show that, in America, reductions of as much as 42 per cent. in road _death-rates are attributed to increased stringency in police enforcenient of traffic legislation. Their methods might be unpopular in Britain—and probably impracticable on the score of inadequate police manpower. On the other hand. consequent upon the instruction and propaganda employed by Major Godfrey, Chief Constable of Salford, in 1928, the casualty rate for that closely-populated area of indifferent streets has decreased during the past sixteen years by 46 per cent. Meanwhile, the figure for Great Britain as a whole has increased by 33 per cent.
Other accident-prevention plans suggest less weighty demands of evidence against drivers under the influence of alcohol; closer supervision of vehicle speeds—especially fot goods transport vehicles; periodic driving tests and vehicle- examinations; pedestrian-controlled traffic-lights; special train- ing for learner motor-cyclists; more rail transport; and special traffic courts, imposing heavier peRalties on offending drivers.
An illuminating close-quarters examination of the problem and detailed suggestions for its solution are put forward in Focus on Road Accidents (Public Affairs News Service: 7s. 6d.). It is a study as efficient as any manual of Air Raid Precautions—and implies equally scanty hopes of ' peace.'
After the demonstration of the fact that road accidents are responsible for almost a quarter of all deaths of children between five and ten in England and Wales comes the passage : Most of these road deaths could be prevented. Because great care has been taken to eliminate them, the deaths from the diseases that every mother dreads, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough and scarlet fever seem low by contrast.' All but the close- working expert in road-traffic affairs will be surprised that the analogy is not followed out. Any suggestion of vital failure, on the author's part, to see the wood for trees, is tersely dealt with in the preface. Government policy [on the condi- tion of British roads] has continually been to " make do and mend " and the officially sponsored Royal' Society for the, Prevention of Accidents not surprisingly concurs with this view.
' Officially sponsored not surprisingly.'
The cost of road accidents in Great Britain is now, at the lowest estimate, £100,000,000 a years Working-time lost and petrol consumed in road-checks certainly entail an even larger drain upon income. The demand for improvement in our roads is overwhelming by humane, economic and, possibly, military standards. Pacifists campaign, with speeches, sandwich-boards and pamphlets, against war: yet p single government is rarely in a position to decide alone on the issue of peade or war. British highways, with their death-roll and suffering for non- combatants,' are solely a matter for the .British government's decision.
As if existing conditions, suffering and waste were not sufficiently insistent, if the present rate of increase is maintained as the motor trade anticipates, the next three years will shoal an additional one and a 'quarter million vehicles on the roads of Britain. This represents a 25 per cent. increase in density of traffic. Such conditions must threaten disruption of all transport.
Already the main morning and evening traffic-streams through the town of Staines move at less than four miles an hour for periods up to an hour. Rush hour'. traffic through the City highWays of London is easily outpaced by pedestrians and, despite considerable and well-planned police control, wide a roundabout as Hyde Park Corner becomes solidly jammed on every working day.
Already it is probably too late to solve the problem. It seems that the Government sealed its unpublished decision to ignore the true problem of the roads with the act of filching the Road Fund. Now, indeed, it is doubtful whether road- building, even if authorised at once along the excellent lines of the British Road Federation's plan, could be carried out in time to save our traffic system from bankruptcy. The parsi- monious errors which will have to be paid for perhaps a thousandfold were made, some of them irretrievably, before the war. The failure to continue London's North Circular Road round on the southern side was made final by subsequent development. The sacrifice of urgently needed by-pass roads round a dozen towns to the importunings of tradesmen who feared loss of passing custom may cost a thousand pounds for every hundred it preserved in trade.
The construction of the German autobahnen was decried, by inference, as equally a war preparation with the manufacture of a tank or poison gas. Over those roads present-day German motor transport, carrying, by the use of trailers, loads twice as great as those of a British Road Services lorry, moves the length and breadth of the country at an average speed of over forty miles an hour—more than four times as fast as heavy haulage in this country.
Britain's need can now be met only by a national network of multi-lane highways with fly-overs, escape-roads and specific high-minimum-speed lanes. Short of this, the varying claims upon the roads must conflict. London's North Circular Road was constructed as a high-speed circuit—but without fly-overs: Now the radial roads which cross it impose such checks and at such frequent intervals that the earlier roads can often be used with greater speed. Ribbon-building has brought a popu- lation along its edges for whose safety pedestrian-operated traffic lights have been installed with further slowing of the vehicle-flow. These signals, however, are at least unequivocal. But what of the notices erected 'side by side with de-restriction Signs on the lamp-posts, which appeal to motorists to drive slowly ?
Less, perhaps, in response to them—or to such excellent `make do and mend advice as Focus gives—the traffic of Britain, although yearly capable of greater speeds, is moving More slowly every day. It is. simultaneously, killing more people. We may well quote once more from Focus on Road Accidents: Unfortunately the previous reports ' (by the Committee on Road Safety to the Minister of Transport) ' have been almost entirely ignored.'
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