ROADS IN BRITAIN

Southland Times, Issue 23182, 24 April 1937, Page 20

ROADS IN BRITAIN

English Writer Traces Accident Causation

Britain has never been the spiritual home of motoring, in the sense that France has. In the early days, while France both in its government and its people, was doing the utmost to foster the new form of transport in the hope, later realized, of building up a great new industry, Britain repealed unwillingly the. Red Flag Act, and substituted in its place the 20 m.p.h. speed limit which endured so many years. Almost all British motoring legislation has been repressive in its nature, and some phases of it, particularly those relating to taxation, have cost the country many millions of pounds in exports by forcing the development of car design along unnatural engineering paths, m the direction of ever smaller engines, which have not been acceptable to buyers less oppressively taxed* • Except for the portion devoted exclusively to the interests of motorists, the British Press has always been anti-motoring in some degree, sometimes violently, but a change of tone is at last becoming noticeable. An instance of this is a recent article in Chambers’ Journal, a periodical not notable for its devotion to motoring interests, in which Mr Henry Leach attempts to analyse the causes of modern heavy traffic casualty lists. “The cars and the cycles, the walkers, the horses and carts, the omnibuses the wagons and lorries, the travelling circus, the children and the nursemaids, the cows and sheep, the dogs and poultry, and the many other living and moving things that crowd upon these roads—where once was solitude.” he says, “all make up the danger. . “Not until recent davs has the truth been realized and officially admitted that in the progress of this great and scandalous national tragedy, it is the roads themselves, in their wholly defective capacity kind and management, that are mainly responsible, which lays the blame definitely upon the Government and the subsidiary controlling authorities. p, r i; 2mpn t “It is alleged against those who are thus responsible in Parliament, where the big speeches are made, and elsewhere, that the idea about speed beiny chiefly responsible has been encouraged as a blind to obscure the real truth of the case, which now forces itself forward owing to the complete failure of the speed limits and other measures adopted at enormous cost, killed and injured being more numerous today than ever. Authority found the* soil very fertile for the propagation of the speed fallacy. During the last few years Britain has built many by-passes, arterial roads and the like, in an attempt to provide routes on which the available speed of motor transport may be utilized. Despite the expenditure of huge sums on these projects Britain today is without a single safe high-speed road comparable with those of Germany, Italy and France. This is due largely to the fact that every new road built creates a minor local building boom, which is allowed to flourish unchecked. Expressively dubbed “ribbon building,” this form of development results in the erection of miles of houses, with the shops to serve them, one allotment deep> aalong the new road. Far from being an arterial road, the new thoroughfare quickly degenerates into an ordinary shopping or residential street, with only the usually greater width and better surface remaining of its original Safe Stopping e ’and turning vehicles, pedestrians and children crossing with their attendant dogs, and all the usual urban traffic hazards appear, and he toll of life goes on unchecked. The arterial road, designed to facilitate the rapid passage of through traffic, has f aila d. . , ... ~ , . , F Nine inquiries into traffic accidents, held m England within the last lew years have shown that 78 per cent, of fatal accidents occur at quite slow speeds This is recognized by the insurance companies which charge premiums higher by 20 per cent, on urban vehicles, despite the fact that the average speed of traffic in London is only eight miles an hour. Were it possible, by improved road layout, to double the average speed, then the immense number of delivery and other vehwles could be halved, and still perform the same work. The result would be, theoretically, a halving of the accidents. Possibly the actual result would be considerably better, for the congestion that makes for slow driving also produces fatigu , impatience, scanty space for manoeuvring, and many other obvious accident factors. The solution, it is thought, would be the reconstruction of roads for through traffic, from which both shops and doorways of any kind were excluded to keep them free from local traffic.