In perusing the road casualty figures for 1937 one inevitably turns to thinking out remedies for an appalling state of affairs. Eighteen people, on an average, lose their lives every day on the roads of Britain, In the course of last year 6,591 were killed and 226,339 injured.
1t is, as I have stated before in these columns, purely a matter of luck when ther one is killed or injured if involved in an accident. What matters, therefore, is not that the number of deaths in 1937 exceeded by thirty those in 1936, but that the total number of casualties was 1444 fewer in 1937 than in 1936.
When it is considered what a big increase in the number of cars and Cycles has taken place in the last twelve months, making roads more crowded than ever, the actual reduction in the number of casualties prompts one to ask whether the tide of road accidents is turning at last.
An accident is rarely bad luck. It is nearly always somebody's fault. Carelessness and ignorance are at the root of most cases of death or injury occurring on our roads. Both can be reduced by instruction and, if needs be, by exemplary punishment A fortune has been spent—not always wisely—on devices to protect road-users afoot or awheel. It is reasonable to suppose that the lower proportion of accidents to the number of vehicles in use is in part due to these safety-first measures.
The pity of it is that the public often show no desire to be protected. Pedestrian-crossings are but little used: people climb through guardrails or blithely walk on the outside of them; cycle-tracks are ignored (and condemned) by responsible associations of cyclists. No notice of traffic-lights is taken by those on foot; and as well as the orange globes denoting their whereabouts, are often wrongly placed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.