Traffic Accidents and Road Safety: The Education of the Pedestrian and the Child, 1900–1970

Abstract

Herbert Morrison, Minister of Transport in the Labour government of 1929–1931, wrote to the Home Secretary in early 1931, boasting that he had driven about 500,000 miles without an accident.¹ Such preening pride would not have been uncommon from some car drivers, but the Minister of Transport was a prominent political figure and his driving record was both exceptional and exemplary in an age of road carnage. Indeed, the confidence he exuded is perhaps a reflection of the faith he, and the second Labour government (1929–1931), held in removing the speed limits for cars under the Road Traffic Act of 1930.² Indeed, both Morrison and the second Labour government seemed to have acted as conduits for the temporary convergence of opinions of both motoring organisations and chief constables; the former wanting to simply remove speed limits per se, whilst the latter wished to remove some of the contentious speed limits for motorised vehicles, albeit convinced by the evidence, emerging in their annual reports, that it was the pedestrians, not the motorists, who were primarily responsible for road accidents. Yet even if pedestrians contributed significantly to their own deaths and injuries, the decision to remove the speed limit seems remarkably thoughtless, and belied the obvious dangers that the car, and other motorised vehicles, presented on the roads of Britain, regardless of who was at fault.³