Are we doing enough for our young people, or are we still blaming the most vulnerable?

This is the subject of a ‘Question-Time’ Panel Discussion on Thursday 26 April organised by RoadPeace.

Panelists include:

• Andrew Colski, Head of Vulnerable Road Users Branch, Road User Safety Division, DfT
• Chris Lines, Head of London Road Safety Unit, Transport for London,
• Jenny Jones, Mayor of London’s Road Safety Ambassador, GLA Green Party Member
• Ian Roberts, Professor of Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Howard Peel, road danger reduction campaigner

Background by Howard Peel

In 1947 JS Dean published a book called ‘Murder Most Foul; a study of the Road Deaths Problem’. This book looked as the history of ‘road safety’ in the U.K. and the reasons why so little had been achieved in the previous decades to reduce the carnage on the roads. [You can download the book here, courtesy of Guy Chapman]

Almost 60 years later the problems Dean identified are still with us.

I urge you to read the pamphlet. Dean often associates the road safety regime to fascism. This mirrors our long-held view that the Highway Code is a piece of fascist legislation, formulated for the benefit of a violent class with scant regard to vulnerable people.

A new draft of this repelling rulebook is doing the rounds, yet again putting drivers’ convenience above the safety of people walking and cycling. It is part of the sinister policy of “educating” vulnerable road users to behave in a way that minimises inconvenience to the motorist.

The event is taking place at The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund offices, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7PB at 14:30 – 16:30. Email RoadPeace to reserve a place or to forward questions for the panelists.

UPDATE 19.4.7 Howard peel writes:

On small thing, I see that you link to Guy Chapman’s site for the download of the book. There is also a link on my J.S. Dean page to Murder Most Foul which I uploaded after preparing the original transcript of the book. Guy just ‘borrowed’ it (with permission) for his own site!

As I resurrected Dean’s book RoadPeace have asked me to write the introduction for the reprint. I am also working an a much longer discussion paper looking at Murder Most Foul and the arguments it contains. I reproduce a short extract of this below for your information as it makes some interesting points regarding the links between the apologists for “the motor slaughter” and the proponents of Fascism, which I note is something that you have noted yourself!

Regards,

Howard Peel
Haute Savoie
France

————————————————————————————–

Dean’s repeated references to Fascism in relation to the politics of ‘the motor slaughter’ (as in the earlier example relating to the activities of ‘motor scouts’) is both one of the more interesting aspects of Murder Most Foul and the one which, 60 years on, probably needs most qualification. However, especially if care is taken consider the context in which Murder Most Foul was written, it is clear that Dean was hardly overstating his case.

Dean was apparently well justified when he made the claim that: “So far as road safety is concerned, the spiritual home of the British motor interests is Nazi Germany” and noted “the deep admiration” British motor correspondents had for Hitler’s vision of Germany, where, in Dean’s words, “all good little Nazis were to have at least a Volkswagen”. For example, the Motor of June 29 1937 argued that “Germany to-day is the nearest approach to Utopia, with a single political creed, whole-hearted worship of the Fatherland.” The Motor went on to note that “cycle tracks (only 2 ft. wide) are to be found alongside the main roads and are used instead of the roadway by cyclists”, concluding that “Germany was a motoring paradise”.

Motoring publications were particularly impressed by Hitler’s attitude to speed. For example, on July 12, 1938 the editor of the Motor railed against the “fatuity” of the questioning of MP. R.W. Sorensen when he asked the Minister of Transport whether he was aware that: “On a recent run to Cambridge a speed of 109 m.p.h. was reached by a motorcar and in view of the road danger of this speed what action he proposes to prevent such speeds.” The editor, apparently with approval, noted that: “If a similar question had been asked in Germany, where they are motor-minded, the questioner by now would have been speeding himself towards a concentration camp!” It would seem that illiberal rhetoric, whether in seriousness, ‘jest’ or simply in order to bait those of a liberal persuasion is not a recent invention of the ‘motor-minded’.

To the motor pundit, not only did Hitler offer a vision of ‘paradise’, according to the Motor of February 23 1937, following his ‘motor-minded’ example was a way to ensure the future strength of the race and nation. Quote: “It used to be said that a Briton was worth three Frenchmen…All this talk of speed limits, this fear of the police and the be-whiskered members of the Pedestrians’ Association, and the wobbly, woolly bicyclists… where is it leading? To racial namby-pambyism, for we are breeding a people unfitted to take their place amongst the great nations of Europe.”

As the foregoing quotes indicate the enthusiasm of many ‘motor-minded’ persons in Britain in the 1930’s for Hitler’ Germany was based on far more than an admiration of the newly-built Autobahns. Although such details tend to be written out of the simplified histories of WW2, in reality there was much support for Fascism in 1930’s Britain. (As Dean would have been well aware). This was especially so amongst those who regarded Fascism as offering a challenge to ‘threats’ of ‘Bolshevism’, socialism and trade unionism. In addition the all-pervasive hierarchism which so characterised Fascist ideology was not entirely dissimilar to the home-grown hierarchism which underpinned Britain’s own social structures. The greatest difference was that the Nazi system of ‘ubermenschen’, ‘untermenschen’ and ’sub-humans’ ‘extended the logic’ of the hierarchical society to its ‘natural’ and horrific conclusion.
That the hierarchism which was so central to Hitler’s Germany was also applied to it’s highways and ‘road safety’ methods was one of it’s greatest attractions to ‘motor-minded’ persons in Britain. Dean writes:
Here, then, are some of the Nazis’ “road-safety” methods: fines for “careless walking,” collectable on the spot; “endangering traffic” and crossing against the amber made punishable offences; special tracks for cyclists; riding with one hand on the handle bars and riding two abreast made offences.
These were exactly the sort of ‘road safety’ methods that the ‘motor-minded’ in Britain had been demanding for decades. To such individuals Germany’s worship of motoring speed and power, its system of fines for pedestrians and “strict discipline” for cyclists, along with a rigidly enforced ‘hierarchy of the road’ where cyclists were to be exiled to their own 2 feet wide ghettos was indeed a vision of a (motoring) paradise.