Comments on: ‘Murder Most Foul’ revisited

By: Michael Hartford · Murder Most Foul: how our roads might have been

Michael Hartford · Murder Most Foul: how our roads might have been — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:05:07 +0000

[...] Dean was writing at an important turning point in transportation history: the automobile culture had not yet claimed dominance in the UK, and was still in its early years in the US: the first section of the M1 motorway opened in 1959, and construction on the Interstate Highway System began in 1956. Traffic on the roads was still mixed: not only trucks and cars, but also pedestrians and cyclists, shared the same paths. Dean documents the ways in which traffic law, supported by lobbyists for the automobile and transport industries, gradually usurped the dominant position on the roads until now pedestrians and cyclists are largely segregated into “safe” zones and many places can be reached only by car. He also draws chilling comparisons with Nazi Germany, called by the British automotive press before the war “a motoring paradise.” (Many quite disturbing quotations from British periodicals about the glories of Hitler’s Autobahn can be found here.) [...]

By: mick stephenson

mick stephenson — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:45:01 +0000

It's been a while since I looked at Howard's site but it seems to be down at the moment: http://www.thebikezone.org.uk/ is a holding page these days. Can anyone shed any light? It's a brilliant resource for cycling campaigners, please don't tell me it's gone for ever…

By: James

James — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 05:44:19 +0000

I took an architectural history class at the Uni when I lived Munich and was stuck by how familiar Nazi traffic engineering was. Over-regulated traffic, roads re-designed with the single goal of maximizing vehicle speed and reducing driver attentiveness and ambiguity to zero. Streets that did your thinking for you! And of course the pedestrian streets were quickly done away with. I’d spent the first 18 years of my life living in such a place. In Los Angeles.
Perhaps an new paper on the subject would compare the traffic engineering of communist eastern europe with that of cities in english speaking countries? Anyone who has tried to cross a 6 lane “street” in a soviet development knwos what I’m talking about.

By: Erik Sandblom

Erik Sandblom — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:41:22 +0000

I think the term “vulnerable road users” serves to perpetuate the idea that only car drivers are legitimate road users. After all, the vulnerable users are weak (fit), and as such, pose a problem for the strong (fat).

So I think the term “soft road users” is better. It puts the burden back on the “hard road users”.