A Spectator's Notebook
AS BOTH PARTIES appear to have agreed—Labour for- mally, the Conservatives in- formally — to reform the licensing laws, I suppose there's a chance that they will be amended some time in the life of the next Parliament; but this kind of legislation is apt to be put at the end of the queue, unless something happens to lend it urgency. And probably no government will regard the publication of the UN Statistics of Road Traffic Accidents in Europe for 1957 as indi- cating that urgency is required. But consider one set of figures: the classification of accidents by the hour of the aay at which they happen. In Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, -Portugal, Swit- zerland and Yugoslavia, the road accident rate dwindles gradually from a maximum between 5 and 7 p.m.—the time when people are going home —to a minimum in the small hours. This applies in all the countries of Europe for which figures are available—except one: Britain. In Britain, too, the maximum accident rate is reached be- tween 5 and 7 p.m.; but there is also another peak accident hour to follow—between 10 and II p.m., when the pubs disgorge their occupants. Nowhere else in Europe does this happen. We are the only European country, in fact, which persists in sentencing a significant proportion of our population to death or disablement every year, under the pretext of preserving them from excessive self-indulgence.
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