Defining early modern automobility

Cultural and Social History

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 211-230

  Luckin, Bill ^a   Sheen, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BOLTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Automobility; Manchester; Road safety; Road traffic accidents; Second World War

Indexed keywords

EID: 70349435161     PISSN: 14780038     EISSN: 14780046     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2752/147800409X411065     Document Type: Article

References (154)

1. The conflict between the two positions is trenchantly summarized in R. Davis, Death on the Streets: Cars and the Mythology of Road Safety (Hawes, 1992). However, in both the past and the present there has been debate about the ever-rising marginal costs of reducing fatalities below a putative 'absolute minimum'.
2. See R. Elvik, 'Can Injury Prevention Efforts Go Too Far?, Accident Analysis and Prevention, 31 (1999), pp. 265-86.
3. The term first surfaced in the early 1960s. See John C. Burnham, 'The Gasoline Tax and the Automobile Revolution', Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 48 (1961), pp. 435-59
4. Corey T. Lesseig, Automobility: Social Changes in the American South 1909-1939 (New York, 2001), p. 1. For a complementary definitional tradition, focusing on industrial and design issues
5. see R. Volti, 'A Century of Automobility', Technology and Culture, 37 (1996), pp. 663-85.
6. John Urry, 'The System of Automobility', in Nigel Featherstone, Nigel Thrift and John Urry (eds), Automobilities (London, 2005), pp. 255-74
7. John Urry 'Mobility and Proximity', Sociology, 36 (2002), pp. 255-74, and Global Complexity (Cambridge, 2003).
8. The diversity of the term is unravelled in the essays in Steffen Böhm, Campbell Jones, Chris Land and Matthew Paterson (eds), Against Automobility (London, 2006).
9. James A. Dunn Jr, Driving Forces: The Automobile, Its Enemies and the Politics of Mobility (Washington, DC, 1998), pp. 1-2.
10. Sudhir Chella Rajan, The Enigma of Automobility: Democratic Politics and Pollution Control (Pittsburgh, PA, 1996), p. 6.
11. Mike Michael, 'The Invisible Car: The Cultural Purification of Road Rage', in Daniel Miller (ed.), Car Cultures (Oxford, 2001), p. 61.
12. See also Bruno Latour, 'A First Few Steps Toward an Anthropology of the Iconoclastic Gesture', Science in Context, 10 (1997), pp. 63-83
13. Wiebe E. Bijker'Sociohistorical Technology Studies', in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen and Trevor Pinch (eds), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (London, 1996), pp. 229-56.
14. Urry, 'System of Automobility', pp. 26-7. Italics in the original.
15. For a subtle analysis of the normality and inevitability of accidents, see Featherstone, 'Introduction', Automobilities, pp. 5-7.
16. John Whitelegg, Critical Mass: Transport, Environment and Society in the Twenty-First Century (London, 1997), pp. 147-69. There is now a large literature on the necessity of finding alternatives in the developing world. For full references
17. see Margie Peden, D. Scurfield, D. Sleet, D. Mohan, A.A. Hyder, R. Scurfield, E. Jarawan and C. Mathers (eds), World Report on Traffic Injury Prevention (World Health Organization, Geneva, 2004).
18. Paul Virilio, in an interview, 'Critical Mass', World Art, 1 (1994), p. 81.
19. See also Paul Virilio Original Accident (Oxford, 2006)
20. Norbert Elias, 'Technicization and Civilization', Theory, Culture and Society, 12 (1995), pp. 7-42
21. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1977).
22. On the Road Safety Act 1967, see John Greenaway, Drink and British Politics since 1830: A Study in Policy-Making (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 166-75
23. Rob Baggott, Alcohol, Politics and Social Policy (Aldershot, 1990), pp. 139-41
24. H. Laurence Ross, 'Law, Science and Accidents: The British Road Safety Act of 1967', Journal of Legal Studies, 2 (1973), pp. 1-78.
25. See the excellent summary in John Broughton, 'Road Accidents Statistics', in Margaret Mitchell (ed.), The Aftermath of Road Accidents: Psychological, Social and Legal Consequences (London, 1997), p. 18.
26. Methodological and institutional background is provided in B.M. White, 'Early Road Traffic Investigation: Problems and Priorities 1909-1933', Road Accidents Great Britain: The Casualty Report 1990 (Department of Transport, London, 1991), pp. 25-9
27. idem, 'Road Accident Statistics in War and Peace', Road Accidents Great Britain 1991: The Casualty Report (Department of Transport, London, 1992), pp. 29-33.
28. See also Howard Taylor, 'Forging the Job: A Crisis of "Modernization" or Redundancy for the Police in England and Wales, 1900-39', British Journal of Criminology, 39 (1999), pp. 113-35.
29. William Plowden, The Motor Car and Politics in Britain 1896-1970 (London, 1971)
30. Sean O'Connell, The Car in British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring 1896-1939 (Manchester, 1998)
31. Clive Emsley, '"Mother, What Did Policemen Do When There Weren't Any Motors?" The Law, the Police and the Regulation of Motor Traffic in England, 1900-1939', Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 357-81.
32. Emsley's reliance on Gattrell's concept of an early twentieth-century 'policeman state' is less revealing than his emphasis on the scapegoating of 'road-hogs'. This latter process legitimated the social construction of an out-group of habitually irresponsible drivers and served to divert attention away from the necessity of introducing more rigorous regulation of the overwhelming majority of private motorists. The latter were therefore more likely to be assumed to be 'cautious' and 'responsible'. The policeman state theme is derived from V.A.C. Gattrell, 'Crime, Authority and the Policeman State', in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.), Cambridge Social History of Britain: Volume 3: 1750-1950 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 243-310.
33. O'Connell, Car in British Society, pp. 112-49.
34. On the United States, see Peter D. Norton, 'Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street', Technology and Culture, 48 (2007), pp. 331-59.
35. See also Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City (New York, 1994)
36. Peter C. Baldwin, Domesticating the Street: The Reform of Public Space in Harford, 1850-1930 (Columbus, OH, 1999). For interstate fatality differentials and comparisons between the United States and other countries
37. see Charles Foreman-Peck, 'Death on the Roads: Changing National Responses to Motor Accidents', in Theo Barker (ed.), The Economic and Social Effects of the Spread of Motor Vehicles: An International Centenary Tribute (London, 1987), pp. 264-90.
38. Joe Moran, 'Crossing the Road in Britain, 1931-1976', Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp.477 and 481.
39. In addition, there is the less tangible sub-theme of the cultural and social atmosphere and context of early modern automobility. See here the disturbing Kurt Moser, 'The Dark Side of Automobilism, 1900-30', Journal of Transport History, 24 (2003), pp. 238-59
40. Thomas Schlich, 'Trauma Surgery and Traffic Policy: A Case Study in the Correlation of Modern Surgery and Society', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80 (2006), pp. 73-94.
41. Urry, 'System of Automobility', p. 26.
42. RoSPA, Road Accident Bulletin, November 1943, pp. 1-8.
43. See also Moran, 'Crossing the Road', p. 479.
44. 'A Shaming Record', Autocar, 24 January 1941, p. 73.
45. RoSPA, Road Accident Bulletin, December 1941, Table xiv, p. 18.
46. Manchester City Council (hereafter MCC), Proceedings, Volume 2: Annual Report of the Chief Constable, 2 July 1941, p. 321
47. Annual Report, 6 May 1942, p. 125
48. Annual Report, 3 March 1943, p. 201.
49. For the national figures, see RoSPA, 'How 1,400 Children Died in Accidents', Road Accident Bulletin, August 1945. The Manchester data are on p. 16 of this report.
50. See, in particular, Richard Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Civil Series (New York, 1976, rev. edn), pp. 2-22
51. Martin Ceadal, 'Popular Fiction and the Next War 1918-1939', in Frank Gloversmith (ed.), Class, Culture and Social Change: A New View of the 1930s (Brighton, 1980), pp. 161-84
52. Bill Luckin, 'War on the Roads: Traffic Accidents and Social Tension in Britain 1939-45', in Roger Cooter and Bill Luckin (eds), Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1997), pp. 234-54.
53. For the broader political and military context, see Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge, 1999)
54. R.K. Middlemas and J. Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (London, 1969), chapters 27 and 28
55. Uri Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack in British Politics (London, 1980)
56. Barry D. Powers, Strategy without Slide-Rule: British Air Strategy, 1914-1939 (London, 1976)
57. A.N. Harvey, Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars (London, 1992), ch. 16.
58. See Martin Ceadal, Pacifism in Britain: The Defining of a Faith (Oxford, 1989)
59. Martin Ceadal Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford, 1989).
60. On this issue, see Robert Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War (Manchester, 2003) and particularly the historiographical overview on pp. 1-13
61. See also Brad Beavan and John Griffiths, 'The Blitz, Civilian Morale and the City: Mass-Observation and Working-Class Culture in Britain, 1940-1', Urban History, 26 (1999), pp. 71-88,
62. Edgar Jones, Robin Woolven, Bill Durodié and Simon Wessely, 'Civilian Morale during the Second World War: Responses to Air-Raids Re-examined', Social History of Medicine, 17 (2004), pp. 463-79.
63. On the blitz, see Angus Calder, The People's War: Britain 1939-45 (London, 1969), ch. 4
64. Angus Calder The Myth of the Blitz (London, 1992).
65. Harvey, Collision of Empires, is also central to an understanding of this period. See, in particular, pp. 660-75.
66. Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics in the Second World War (London, 1975) remains invaluable
67. But see also Junichi Hasegawa, Reforming the Blitzed City Centre: A Comparative Study of Bristol, Coventry and Southampton, 1941-50 (Buckingham, 1992)
68. Nick Tiratsoo exceptionally useful overview 'The Reconstruction of Blitzed British Cities', Contemporary British History, 14 (2000), pp. 27-44.
69. MCC, Proceedings, Volume 2, Annual Report of the Lighting Committee, 3 October 1939, p. 1251.
70. See also Sheena D. Simon, A Century of City Government: Manchester 1838-1938 (London, 1938), p. 371
71. Arthur Redford(assisted by I.S. Russell), The History of Local Government in Manchester: Volume 3, The Last Half Century (London, 1940), p. 312.
72. Redford, Local Government, p. 383.
73. See T.H. O'Brien, Civil Defence, History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Civil Series (London, 1955), pp. 106-8
74. Eddie Little, 'Manchester City Council and the Development of Air Raid Precautions 1935-1939', Manchester Region History Review, 2 (1988), p. 5.
75. Little, 'Manchester City Council', pp. 4-5.
76. Manchester's Siren Tests', Manchester Guardian, 18 August 1938, p. 11.
77. Little, 'Manchester City Council', p. 11.
78. O'Brien, Civil Defence, p. 131,
79. O'Brien, 'The Nursing Reserve', Manchester Guardian, 4 August 1939, p. 4.
80. MCC, Proceedings, Volume 2, Minutes of the Evacuation Sub-Committee, 22 May 1939, pp. 1341-4.On broader national aspects of mass evacuation
81. see Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, pp. 23-44, 101-36 and 142-70
82. Calder, People's War, pp. 35-50
83. John MacNicol, 'The Effect of the Evacuation of Schoolchildren on Official Attitudes to State Intervention', in Harold Smith (ed.), War and Social Change: British Society in the Second World War (Manchester, 1986), pp. 3-31.
84. 'Manchester's Black-out: The Moral', Manchester City News, 8 April 1939, p. 3.
85. It was, for example, over-optimistically claimed that 'citizens are now familiar with the masked traffic lights, reduced to a small cross of red or green'. See 'No Air Survey of Blackout', Manchester Guardian, 16 May 1939, p. 11.
86. Tom Harrisson, Living through the Blitz (London, 1976), pp. 246-9
87. Anon., Our Blitz: The Daily Dispatch Record in Stories and Pictures (Manchester, 1941)
88. Michael G. Pateman, 'Towards the New Jerusalem: Manchester Politics in the Second World War', unpublished PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2000, ch. 3.
89. 'Back to it, Mancunians', Manchester City News, 28 December 1940, p. 3.
90. Harrisson, Living through the Blitz, p. 246.
91. British Parliamentary Papers, House of Lords, Select Committee (HL) on the Prevention of Road Accidents: Final Report, vol. 5, 1939, p. 67
92. Robert Munro, Baron Alness (1865-1955), sat as a Liberal MP between 1910 and 1922 and was Secretary of State for Scotland between 1916 and 1922. He was ennobled in 1934 and introduced reform of the divorce law in Scotland in 1938. Throughout the latter part of his career in the Lords, Alness was an assiduous chair of committees on a wide range of economic and social issues. He was a member of the Child Guidance Council and the National Council for Mental Hygiene. 'Munro, Robert, Baron Alness (1865-1955)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.Oxforddnb.com/view/article/40352, accessed 18 April 2007.
93. Douglas E. Allen, 'Accidents Are Mistakes', Autocar, 5 May 1943, p. 323 For a very nearly identical immediate post-war formulation
94. see Ministry of War, Design and Layout of Roads in Built-up Areas: Report of the Departmental Committee Set up by the Ministry of War Transport (London, 1946), p. 4.
95. Manchester Evening Chronicle, 12 October 1939, p. 3.
96. 'Exhibition Report' (n.d. but probably 1944). Manchester Central Library (hereafter MCL), Local Studies Section, F 614 8 S 36.
97. Manchester Evening Chronicle, 9 September 1939, p. 3.
98. Manchester Evening Chronicle., 13 September 1939, p. 3.
99. Manchester Evening Chronicle, 28 September 1939, p. 4.
100. http://www.jp29.org/2ar.htm, World War II in Northern England. Accessed 10 March 2008.
101. MCC, Proceedings, Volume 2: Report of the City Coroner, 1 May 1940, p. 722.
102. This attitude is sub-textually present in C.V. Godfrey, Roadsense for Children (Oxford, 1937).
103. Clearly, there was no necessary contradiction between saving young lives and 'blaming the pedestrian'. For information on Godfrey's general attitude towards law enforcement, see Andrew Davies, 'The Police and the People: Gambling in Salford, 1900-1939', Historical Journal, vol 34 (1991), pp.97-9. On his road safety activities
104. see Moran, 'Crossing the Road', p. 479.
105. MCC, Watch Committee, Statistical Returns of the Police, Fire Brigade and Weights and Measures Departments (Manchester, 1934), pp. xv and 39.
106. MCC, Chief Constable's Report on Administration of the Police Department 1935, p. 39.
107. MCC, Chief Constable's Report 1937, p. 44.
108. See Herbert Alker Tripp, Road Traffic and Its Control (London, 1938)
109. Herbert Alker Tripp Town Planning and Road Traffic (London, 1942).
110. 'Tragedy Puzzle', Autocar, 5 December 1941, p. 945.
111. See also 'A National Disaster', Autocar, 8 August 1941, p. 639.
112. Manchester City News, 21 October 1939, p. 1.
113. MCC, Chief Constable's Report 1944, pp. 21-6.
114. 'The Real Problem', Manchester Guardian, 11 September 1939, p. 6.
115. 'Civilian Casualties', Manchester Guardian, 11 September 1939, p. 6.
116. The crisis encouraged the development of unexpected alliances. Autocar, the voice of the motorist, precisely echoed the Manchester Guardian in an article controversially entitled 'It's Safer in the Front Line', Autocar, 27 October 1939, p. 591.
117. 'Road Hogs - New Style', Manchester Guardian, 19 December 1939, p. 6.
118. 'The Black-out', Manchester Guardian, 24 January 1940, p. 6. Once again, the pro-motorist Autocar replicated the paper's anti-governmental line
119. See 'London and Paris', Autocar, 19 January 1940, p. 53.
120. 'Road Deaths', Manchester Guardian, 26 November 1940, p. 4.
121. 'Lifts from Motorists', Manchester Guardian, 28 December 1940, p. 6.
122. 'The Lords and the Roads', Manchester Guardian, 26 February 1941, p. 4.
123. H.M. Vernon, Road Accidents in War-time (Cambridge, 1941), p. 111.
124. 'Problem of the Roads', Manchester Guardian, 11 September 1939, p. 6.
125. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, pp. 412 and 423.
126. On the difference between collective and individual 'felt' subjective risk on the road, see Colin Buchanan, Mixed Blessing: The Motor in Britain (London, 1958), p. 87
127. G.W. Trinca, Reducing Traffic Injury: A Global Challenge (Melbourne, 1988), p. 45
128. British Medical Association, The Drinking Driver: Report of the Board of Science and Education (London, 1988), p. 2.
129. Vernon, Road Accidents, p. 113.
130. See the typically radical critique in A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 535-6.
131. 'New Drive to Cut Road Accidents', Manchester Evening Chronicle, 9 July 1945, p. 4.
132. See also 'Safety Conference', Manchester Guardian, 10 July 1945, p. 6.
133. MCL, Manchester Road Safety Exhibition (Manchester, 1947), Local Studies Section, 614.862.M1.
134. Plowden, Motor Car, Appendix B, p. 456.
135. As early as 1944 leading figures in the motor industry had been informed that the road construction and reconstruction programme could not be expected to begin before 1946. See 'Misleading Accident Figures', Autocar, 10 January 1944, p. 37.
136. 'Protest', Autocar, 10 May 1946, p. 389.
137. The campaign is touched on by Plowden, Motor Car, pp. 330-1
138. Moran, 'Crossing the Road', p. 484.
139. There were half as many deaths on the road in 1950 as there had been in the ten years earlier. RoSPA, Road Accident Statistics 1938-1954 (London, n.d.), pp. 1-2.
140. The official position was formulated in Ministry of War Transport, Interim Report of the Committee on Road Safety (London, 1944), pp. 38-44.
141. See also Tripp, Road Traffic. For Manchester, the definitive statement may be found in MCC, Public Safety Special Committee, Minutes. Proceedings, Volume 2, October 1949, 'Memorandum on Traffic Movement and Road Safety'.
142. See Helen Meller, Towns, Plans and Society in Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1997), chapters 4 and 5,
143. John Stevenson, 'Planner's Moon? The Second World War and the Planning Movement', in Smith (ed.), War and Social Change, pp. 58-77.
144. For a pro-motorist account of 'black-spot' theory, see 'The Speed Limit Must Fail', Autocar, 24 May 1940, pp. 537-8.
145. See R. Nicholas, City of Manchester Plan (Norwich and London, 1945). By 1948 modification and delay were giving way to abandonment.
146. See 'The New Manchester Is Shelved', Manchester Evening News, 23 February 1948, p. 4. For national comparisons, see Tiratsoo, 'Reconstruction'.
147. Ministry of Transport, Traffic in Towns: A Study of the Long-term Problems of Traffic in Urban Areas (London, 1963).
148. Rajan, Enigma. See also the same author's 'Automobility and the Liberal Disposition', in Böhm et al. (eds), Against Automobility, pp. 113-30.
149. O'Connell, Car in British Society, pp. 143-4
150. Moran, 'Crossing the Road', p. 481.
151. Ross, 'Law, Science and Accidents', p. 14.
152. Hansard Parliamentary Debates (HL), vol. 230, 13 April 1961, col. 381
153. See also Barbara Wootton, Social Science and Social Pathology (London, 1959), pp. 25-8 and 49.
154. Urry, 'System of Automobility', p. 26.