ROAD CASUALTIES.

HL Deb 21 November 1945 vol 137 cc1088-145

4.24 p.m.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK rose to call attention to the heavy casualties on the roads; to ask His Majesty's Government what steps they propose to take to make the roads safer; and to move for Papers. The most reverend Primate said: My Lords, the House has listened with very great sympathy to the plea for the preservation, of ancient buildings. I am sure that the House will listen with equal sympathy to a plea for the preservation of the lives of young and old upon our roads. Before the war this question of road traffic was frequently raised in this House, and earlier in the war it was raised, I think, by myself on two occasions. During the crisis of the war, however, with the heavy burden falling upon the various Ministries, it seemed inopportune to raise the question then. But now we are passing rapidly into the days of peace I think it is right that the House and the country generally should realize the extreme gravity of the present position.

During the war, from September, 1939, to August, 1945, 44,307 people were killed on the roads. That is a number as large as the population of a town like Bedford. It is estimated—they are not quite complete figures—that during that time there were 800,000 people who were injured seriously or less seriously on the roads. That is a number as large as the population of the City of Manchester. Among the killed there were 7,000 children. Since that date, since the restoration of basic petrol, the position has become more serious. In May there were 1,000,000 cars licensed, in October 1,500,000. In June there were 3,000 killed or seriously injured on the roads and in October that number had risen to 3,940. Let me put the position to your Lordships in another way. Every day 16 are killed and 100 seriously injured —I am not including those slightly injured. Among the killed every day there are three children. It has been stated officially that one child in every thirty of school age will be killed or injured before his or her schooldays are over.

Those facts are simply appalling and I am amazed that more attention is not drawn to them. If there is a railway accident we have headlines and columns of print if there is an aeroplane crash considerable notice is paid to it; but day by clay these casualties take place on the roads and comparatively small attention is paid to them. We are taking them almost for granted, which is a deplorable attitude of mind. I do not for one moment say that all these accidents are due to the carelessness or the recklessness of motorists. There are careless cyclists who sometimes ride three abreast on the road or straggle here and there over it; and there are pedestrians who ignore the footpaths and walk upon the roads. That is one of the characteristics which I find distinguishes the North of England from the South. In the South of England the cars keep to the roads and the pedestrians keep to the pavements, but in many of our cities in the North the Northerner, showing his sturdy independence, walks in the road and the car frequently has to go on the pavement to avoid him. There are undoubtedly pedestrians and cyclists who are partly responsible for the accidents which take place, but this great difference must be remembered—the penalty is totally different. If a motorist is careless or reckless and is convicted as such, he may have his licence suspended, or he may be fined, or he may even have to go to prison; but a pedestrian or a cyclist pays the penalty of death or mutilation.

EARL HOWE

My Lords, I do not want to interrupt the, most reverend Primate, but could he possibly tell us who he describes as a motorist?

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

By a motorist I mean a person who drives a car. I think that is a perfectly. adequate and simple explanation. I can quote another fact to the noble Earl. Seven out of every one hundred casualties are to motorists; the other casualties are pedestrians and cyclists or, I suppose, in some cases, those who are in other cars. Only 7 per cent. of the total number of casualties are the actual drivers. What is to be done in this most grave position? A very valuable Report came out just before the war, the Report of the Alness Committee. That Report made a very large number of recommendations, I think something like 160. It is a very comprehensive Report. The first recommendation is that the Highway Code should be revised and given the force of law, and the last recommendation is that handlebars should not be too low or saddles too high. I am anxious to know from the Government which of those recommendations they propose to carry out in the near future.

The Government have told us that they are launching a great campaign of propaganda. I hope that will be most successful. I hope they will use the Press (and already valuable work has been done by one of our daily newspapers, the Daily Sketch, for the preservation of the life of children), I hope they will use the cinema, I hope they will use the wireless, I hope they will use every kind of publicity possible, persistently and skilfully, to bring home to people the dangers of the road and the necessity for taking precautions; but not all the propaganda in the world will really succeed in solving the problem. There is rather a touching statement in the Interim Report of the Committee on Road Safety. It is stated: If we could eliminate human error, raise the standard of road manners of all users, make the roads really adequate for to-clay and to-morrow and ensure that vehicles are always in a roadworthy condition we should have solved the problem. "If we could eliminate human error "!That reminds me of the people who often say to me, when I have spoken on some social problem:" If everyone was a. Christian to-day that difficulty would not arise." We have to face the fact that there are a large number of people who are impervious to propaganda, who are blind to the dangers of the road and who are reckless in their selfishness. Although propaganda is quite essential, something a good deal more than propaganda is required, if the roads are to be made safe.

There is a long-term policy, and I shall say a very little about it. The long-term policy is to improve the roads, to reconstruct them for motor traffic and to segregate the various users of the road. I believe as a long-term policy that is right. The position at the present time on our roads is quite impossible because roads which were made for slow traffic are now used for every kind of traffic. It is almost impossible, even for the most skilful driver, to avoid, ocasionally at any rate, the risk of accident. That is a long-term policy, and it will be a long time before the Government can reconstruct our roads. We want an immediate policy, a policy which will deal with the present appalling position.

There are just three suggestions that I would make. As soon as possible a test should be required of those who apply for licences to drive on the roads. During the war it was, for obvious reasons, impossible to apply that test. I am told there are something like a half million people driving to-day who have only provisional licences. Probably the great majority of those are careful and thoroughly capable drivers, but there are some who may not be. I can quote my own case. During the war I had to learn to drive my car and I drove it very cautiously, haunted by the memory of speeches I had made in this House about the danger of careless driving. I had the uneasy feeling that I should not have passed a test. However, it was comparatively safe then, for the roads—and I chose the right roads—were usually empty; but I know I should be a dangerous driver if I attempted to go on the roads now. I have no intention of driving on the roads now, for I know I should not be able to pass a test and that I should not be a safe driver in an emergency in the midst of heavy traffic. I think it quite possible that amongst those who have provisional licences there is a minority who are in almost the same position as myself. I am not asking that every one who has a provisional licence should at once be tested. That is out of the question. All I ask is that when any one who has a provisional licence has been in a road accident and is found in any way guilty, he should be tested to see whether he is really capable of driving on the roads.

Secondly, I hope that as soon as possible the recommendation of the Alness Committee will be carried out, to eliminate blind corners. In their Report they state: The necessity for the elimination of blind corners on main roads is so obvious that the Committee need not stress it. These corners are gradually being removed, but the Committee urge that the efforts of all authorities concerned with this improvement should be redoubled. I need not argue the danger that arises from these blind corners. When I was learning to drive, a younger friend of mine said, with perhaps more wisdom than tact, "Never forget that there may be another fool coming round the corner." That is, of course, what one has to bear in mind, though one might phrase it somewhat differently! The sooner these corners are removed, the safer will some of the roads become.

Thirdly, I would urge the enforcement of the speed limit. Here again, I am not asking for a universal speed limit. That would be impossible to enforce, and it is quite unnecessary to ask for it. There are a great many roads upon which speed is quite justified, but there is a very great danger from speed on certain roads where the houses open right on to the road and children can easily rush out on to the road. At the present time these speed limits are ignored. I have watched this again and again. When in my own car I have been going at speed within the law along one of these roads where there is a speed limit, car after car, exultantly hooting, has passed me. Only yesterday, as I watched a certain restricted area, car after car rushed through what is a rather crowded area without any kind of reference to the speed limit. The danger of speed is that it allows no margin for error of judgment. Another danger of speed is that the car is much more likely to be involved in a serious accident if it is going at 40 miles an hour instead of 20, or 60 miles an hour instead of 40. Motorists may say that it is very inconvenient to have to slow down in certain places, but what is inconvenience compared with human life?

Here I come to what seems to me one of the most serious features of the whole position. Of late years we have increasingly disregarded the value of the life of the individual. We think of masses, of groups, of classes, but again and again we forget the value of the individual. I think it is because we have become apathetic about the value of the individual that we tolerate this terrible death and casualty roll which goes on day by day on our roads. That death and casualty roll is bound to get worse next summer unless something is done. There will be more and more cars on the road, and people have very largely lost their road sense. There is no necessity for these accidents. They are not due to some inexorable law of nature which we canner: alter. If the nation resolves that these accidents shall be reduced in number, and the Government act vigorously, they can be reduced. It is the duty and it is the right of the Government to see that the roads are made safe for their citizens. for we all of us have a common right in these roads. I beg to move for Papers.

4.40 p.m.

LORD WALKDEN

My Lords, in view of the fact that a large number of your Lordships wish to speak in this debate. it may be helpful if I make at once a statement on behalf of the Government. The Government welcome this debate. We are most grateful to the most reverend Primate for raising this matter, and certainly we here are grateful to him for his eloquent speech and for the way in which he has presented the facts of the case We also appreciate—certainly I do personally—the interest that this house has taken in this subject for many years, before the war, during the war, and now that the war is over. I think it is rather fine that a body of men who usually ride in their own cars, with a hand-picked chauffeur to take them safely wherever they want to go, should take such an interest in pedestrians and cyclists and other humble citizens who suffer most from the casualties on the road. I feel most grateful for that attitude of mind. I want also to pay a tribute to the work done by the Alness Committee in giving us that wonderful Report which is the foundation of all consideration of this question of road traffic and road safety.

The most reverend Primate has given us some figures which relieve me of the necessity of trying to transmit to the House all the statistics with which I have been supplied, but in the first place I want to underline the point which he has made, that, whatever present-day I past statistics show, we are now coming to a period where there will be greater danger on the roads than in the past. Present-day difficulties are accentuated by the heavily-reduced personnel of our Police Forces, who did splendid service in trying to maintain safety on the road. The Auxiliary Police, who were there to assist them, are now withdrawing. Overage men who were retained are going into retirement. The police have been loaded with a great deal of war work, some of which is continuing, which has handicapped them a good deal. The most serious fact, however, is that during the past six years there has been no recruitment to the police; all the men have gone into the Fighting Services. That creates a most unfortunate situation so far as this question is concerned. I want to express our appreciation of the great services rendered by the police. Our British policemen are a wonderful body of men, who increase in good manners, in knowledgeableness and in good conduct as time goes on. I think I may say that we have among them some of the finest men in the world, and we feel grateful to them for the great services which they are always giving us.

On the statistical side, while I do not want to weary your Lordships with any figures about the injured—because, after all, an injured person is still alive, and life is so lovely that if we escape with it we are glad—I want to make a comparison of the figures for those killed in the years 1926 and 1934, to help you to appreciate how the position, has fluctuated and how it is developing. In the year 1926, 4,886 persons were killed, an average of thirteen a day. In 1934, the number killed rose to 7,343, an average of twenty a day—a dreadful figure. In 1944, when further consideration had been given to the matter and certain measures taken, including the provision of the only speed limit we have, which only operates during hours of darkness—

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS

No, no.

LORD WALKDEN

I cannot find that we had any speed limit in the day-time, apart, perhaps, from some local limits.

A NOBLE LORD

There is a speed limit of 30 miles per hour in built-up areas in daylight as well as after dark. And that operates in daylight.

A NOBLE LORD

If there are lamps it operates even if the lamps are not lit.

LORD WALKDEN

The twenty mile an hour limit under the rule brought in for war-time operates during daylight as well as during darkness. To proceed with what I was saying. In 1934 the number of road accidents was very bad, but this amongst other reforms operated to help to reduce the number and in 1935 they fell to 6,502, an average of eighteen a day. That was of course still far too many. There was some deterioration in 1936, but the figures ran very much on the 1935 level for a considerable time. In the early part of the war we had to abandon complete statistics and the totals of fatalities only were taken. In 1941, owing largely to war-time carelessness, the number of fatalities reached 9,169—twenty-five a day. That was really very ghastly indeed. The speed limitation to twenty miles an hour in darkness was imposed and the petrol restrictions, which thinned down the number of cars on the road, also helped in bringing about conditions of safety at night. So, in 1944, the fatalities totalled 6,416—eighteen per day. It will be seen, therefore, that there was a drop of from twenty-five to eighteen a day. In 1945, the current year, they are just about the same as last year, but that is largely due to the continuance of the war-time restrictions during the main part of the year and restrictions on petrol.

The fact that there have been far fewer vehicles on the roads has been a very important factor in keeping down the number of accidents. There have indeed been far fewer vehicles on the roads in recent times, but now greater numbers are coming back again. The licensing of cars is increasing and the figures run roughly like they did in May, 1939, which may be taken as a normal period before the war. In May, 1939, the total number of cars licensed was 1,970,000—or roughly 2,000,000. In May of the present year the number was 1,010,000 which shows a decrease of something over 959,000. At the present moment it is estimated there are 1,570,000 licenced, or only 400,000 less than before the war. So we are steadily getting back to the position which existed before the war. That will be accentuated without doubt.

LORD SANDHURST

May I interrupt the noble Lord for a moment? Does his figure include the very large number of vehicles that do not pay a tax and are employed on Government work, such as Army vehicles, Admiralty vehicles and so on?

LORD WALKDEN

Well, the figures have not been analysed to give us in detail that information. I am afraid, though that it is true, that a large number of casualties have been caused by fast-running Service vehicles.

LORD SANDHURST

Are these included in your figure of 1,570,000? Are they counted as licensed vehicles?

LORD WALKDEN

I am speaking of private cars that are licensed. The other vehicles that are on the road probably make up the difference between the totals of the numbers of vehicles running to-day and those running before the war. Fewer public service vehicles are now on the road than was the case during the war but the number of private cars is increasing.

THE MARQUESS OF READING

My Lords, will the noble Lord tell us whether the; figures which he has given refer to private motor cars or to all licensed motor vehicles, because one figure has not much relevance whilst the other is extremely important.

LORD WALKDEN

These figures relate to all licensed vehicles. I take it that Service vehicles are not licensed. As I say, the total of licensed vehicles is tending to get back to what it was before the war. What I have just stated largely shows the position as it is at the moment. The most reverend Primate has given terrible figures in respect of the accidents in which children have been involved and those figures coincide with those with which I have been supplied. I desire only to emphasize one point. The deaths of these little children take place, to a very large extent, in our great cities, most of them in London. Shame upon us that thousands upon thousands, even millions, of little children in this country have only the streets to play in. We must provide more playing fields and other open spaces for them. We must make better provision for the children as well as taking steps with regard to vehicles which use our roads. A very large percentage of the fatalities take place in London, and I would like to say a few words about the situation in London itself.

London is so enormous and so important, and so many of those accidents and fatalities take place in it, that I think we should give it a little special consideration. We should certainly give it more consideration than it appears to have received at other hands. Now every morning thousands of pedestrians come pouting into our cities. They come from every main line terminal station as well as from the smaller stations. They have to go out on to the pavements and to cross streets, and they help to swell the number of people living within the city, who are also using the streets, to such an extent that congestion is caused. More and more cars come into London from outside as the years go on. Then there is the clamour for more and more buses. So we have more people, more cars and more buses —clamoured for anyhow.

I suggest that the position needs looking at seriously and that measures should considered for checking these evils. In my view fewer cars should come right into the town. I would commend to your Lordships' consideration the most excellent provision made by the London Passenger Transport Board at several of their terminal points. At Morden when they began limy made a great car park to which people could come in from Surrey in the mornings, park their cars and alien push on into London by tube so that they did not block the streets. I think that showed a splendid foresight on the part of Lord Ashfield. The Board have followed up this scheme at other places including Osterley, Amos Grove and Enfield West, and I understand that other great parks are being planned by the Board in connexion with the £40,000,000 programme which they are proposing to carry out as soon as the necessary labour and materials are available.

Now as to the suggestion for more and more ' buses. It does not take much imagination to realize what it would mean if we did have more and more buses in London. My own feeling is that we should rather call for more tube railways, that tube railways in the centre of London should be duplicated where necessary. As many of your Lordships know, in Nem York the tube railways run four tracks—two fast lines in the centre and one stopping line on each side. That relieves congestion enormously. We could, I believe, do it in London. Our subsoil is much easier to work than the New York granite. We have a clay that cuts like cheese. Extension of the tube railways would relieve congestion right in the middle of our city. That, I think, is the most important matter to bear in mind. If this suggestion could be carried into effect—and I think it will be—it would be extraordinarily beneficial.

The most reverend Primate referred to drivers, a large number of whom have not been examined and tested as to whether they were qualified to drive. That is all too true. They are increasing. They are part of the increasing problem which is with us at the moment. It is a fact, according to my observation, that there are many more pedal bicycles in existence as well as amateur drivers. A lot of pedal bicycles have been made during the war and these have increased the serious difficulties on the roads. There will be many more motor cycles and eventually many more cars. More petrol will be supplied and we shall have more congestion still, and there will be more young children always growing up to educate. This problem is going to be acute and it really does need the most earnest attention from everyone concerned.

The Government have not been slow in considering this and in dealing with it. In spite of their many present preoccupations over demobilization, which, as you know is largely a matter of transport, the Minister of War Transport gave early priority to this matter of accidents. The Minister himself deputed his Parliamentary Secretary, a most capable and efficient man who is passionately fond of children, is young, energetic and enthusiastic, to deal with this work, and he will be helping in this question in a very vigorous fashion. The Minister, with the Government's support, have instituted—it is in full spate now—a great education and propaganda campaign. We are perfectly well aware that that will not cure everything, but surely it will be helping to minimize the trouble and make people accident-conscious. The risk of accidents must be brought to everyone's mind now. This campaign is to run intensively for six months, with the highest skilled helpers and with everything to make it effective. After six months, further measures will be taken in hand. The Government have authorized an expenditure of £250,000 for the purpose of making this campaign thoroughly effective. The campaign will be based on the Highway Code, a booklet with which you are all familiar. It is being revised and reprinted and it is only shortage of paper which has prevented further supplies becoming available. Millions of them will be produced and made available. Step will be taken to place one in every home in England. It will be a brighter edition, better illustrated, more graphic and divided into sections in a more effective way.

All the organizations concerned in this problem have undertaken to help—pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, women's and men's organizations and, not the least, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. All these bodies are helping in bringing these facts and the advice of the Highway Code right into the minds of all concerned. The local councils have been urged to co-operate and they are responding very well indeed. The Government have given them a 50 per cent. grant on any expense they incur and we feel that there they will be helping in a very strenuous and effective way. We are getting assistance from the police and the school teachers, and I am sure we are grateful to the school teachers. Most of the children and the old folks are helping. The Press is helping. It has been able to help more especially in the direction indicated by the most reverend Primate, but they do not publicize road accidents; they give undue space to railway accidents in my view. We are going to have a great deal of help from the pulpit and the pulpit is more effective than some people think. With the co-operation of all the teachers in the country I am sure that our campaign will be strengthened. The cinema is helping and, again not the least, the B.B.C.

All this help is being actively carried out now, but the Ministry is strengthening the work of all these helpers with a new production which contains statistics set out in a very modern way, in the most vivid fashion possible, showing very effectively how the facts can he brought home. For instance, you will see from this example at the bottom of the page a reference to the deaths of children. They are nearly all killed before they are ten years old. That often comes about by playing round cars. The children chase one another around these cars and they even sit down between the front wheels. The driver comes out, steps in his car and drives off, and before he knows where he is, he has killed a child. Again, they run into the road to prevent being caught and are run over. The attention of school teachers is being drawn to that. We have further plans for early action. As soon as possible, when we can get the Police Force restored, more men will be put on crossing duty. Mobile police patrols will be reinstituted and you will remember that they were extremely helpful. There will be more traffic signals and more signs to protect more of the crossings. There will be more white lines and what the boys call "cats-eyes" down the centre of the roads to guide drivers at night. There will be a resumption of the driving test, and I am sure the most reverend Primate will be glad to know that the Ministry hope—I cannot put it higher than that—that the driving test will be reinstituted in the new year. It is a matter of getting competent people to conduct the tests. It is not everyone who can judge whether or not a motorist is competent.

Advice is being issued for stricter enforcement of the traffic laws. I do not know if those laws have been looked upon so seriously during the war period, but I entirely agree with the most reverend Primate that there should be a closer enforcement of the laws. I hope that magistrates will take that consideration to heart. Then there will be more guard rails by kerbs to stop people being pushed into the road by the crowd at the back. There will also be more one-way streets and roundabouts and the removal of "blind" spots. All these points are recommended in the Alness Report and active steps will be taken to carry out these improvements. If we can get local authorities to cooperate, and when the coal situation is easier, we shall want better lighting of the highway. We want more of our highways well lighted. And finally, and this is a matter of getting suitable clerical staff, we want more and better statistics. Statistics are often rather vague. They are just thrown together and you have to make the best of them. That will involve more research. The problem will be looked at more closely and thoroughly when we have got the staff to enable us to do that. Those are the immediate things which we contemplate doing as soon as material and man-power are available. The whole question is under the further consideration of the Ministry. The Parliamentary Secretary is making a special effort and I am sure that as progress can be made, so it will be made.

We have further aims. As the most reverend Primate has indicated, there must be a long-distance programme. In the forefront we put more car parks everywhere. Cars left standing about constitute a most serious danger. There must be more car parks and more lay-bys for road lorries on the country roads. Any number of people get knocked down in the country because of lorries standing in the roads instead of going into lay-bys off the road. Then—and this is my own suggestion—I think we shall have to go in for underground parking in London and the great cities. Policemen tell me that they harass a motorist who has a car standing by the kerb, and he says: "Where am I to go? I do not know where to put my car." That is often true in all these great cities where accidents occur. There are some underground parking places in London, and they are wonderful—a sort of Aladdin's cave with any amount of room and full of beautiful cars. We must have more of them, but that is a matter involving time, labour and expense. In so far as public authorities will initiate that kind of thing the Government are prepared to furnish them with loans on very easy terms—a shade over 3 per cent.—to enable them to carry out the work, the feeling being that we must reduce standing vehicles which are a most serious element in the cause of accidents.

Your Lordships will know that we want more national trunk roads to provide for the better segregation of travelling vehicles. In so far as new trunk roads have been made in our country, I think they are as good as anywhere in the world, but we want to keep on improving them, having more fly-over crossings and that kind of thing. One can get that done best if the roadways are under the direct control of the Government. Your Lordships will remember that in 1936 4,500 miles of highway were brought under the Ministry of Transport. I hope that you will be asked to consider a measure in a few days' time by which 3,685 more miles of public highway will be brought directly under the Ministry, making a total of 8,185 miles of highway which could be made into model roads as soon as circumstances enable us to do it, without bothering the local authorities with the responsibility or the expense. That will be borne by the Treasury, and therefore will be carried out without the difficulty, delay, anxieties and trouble that local authorities are bound to have to face if they try to tackle these great things. We must have more and better roadways; we must have more and better protection for people who want to use those roadways, and we should get our conscience aroused on the matter.

To me it seems that the coming of the internal combustion engine has created a revolution in many directions. It really turned the King's highway into something like an open railway along which people are rushing at 60 miles an hour without provision being made for that kind of speed. In my young days a nag that could do 10 miles an hour was considered a fast stepper. Now people are not satisfied with 30 miles an hour but must have unlimited speed in the open country. That is a terrible thing. Think what would be the effect of taking down all the fences on the railways and at the level crossings and making the track like it is at level crossings, with other vehicles running over it. That is pretty much what our roads are like now. The internal combustion engine has come and speed has come, and we have not provided the roads. It will be a tremendous job to do, but that will be our task in the future.

In conclusion I can assure your Lordships that this subject continues to have most devoted attention always. We have a permanent standing committee—the Committee on Road Safety—which originated, I think, in the Ministry of Road Transport in the time when Lord Llewellin was the Parliamentary Secretary. It has continued, with the Parliamentary Secretary always acting as Chairman of that Committee, which is always working on the problem. Further, Scotland Yard, the headquarters of police, the Home Office, the Ministry of Education and every Ministry that is at all concerned in the matter of road safety, are always thinking what they can do to help in the matter. Moreover, there are, of course, no end of individuals, most worthy public officials, police constables and other men of that kind, who are always worried and anxious at what is taking place. I can assure your Lordships that the Ministry of Transport is vividly conscious of all this, and will continue to do the utmost it can to reduce the casualties on the roads arid make our country more safe to live in.

5.11 p.m.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

My Lords, the concluding observations of my noble friend give me some encouragement because they at any rate show that the Government are seriously considering this matter. Otherwise I am sure I shall have the support of a great many of the noble Lords who hear me when I say that this debate is a very melancholy occasion. Here we are again discussing this subject. I remember it being discussed for the first time years ago when the late Lord Buckmaster was the great protagonist of the necessity for doing something. Speeches almost as eloquent as that delivered this afternoon by His Grace the Archbishop of York were made very much on the same lines and were received with the same approval and support of your Lordships as his speech this afternoon was received. But yet the loss goes on, after all these debates, numbers of inquiries by Committees and Commissions and a good deal of legislation, unfortunately quite inadequate and unsuccessful.

I am not going into statistics—they have been stated quite sufficiently. It is not really a question of statistics. Everybody knows the broad facts of the case and they are these: that we have to deplore, year after year, the death of hundreds of our fellow-citizens, many of whom are children, and the maiming and injuring, more or less seriously, of tens of thousands. Those are the broad facts, and no amount of statistics, in my judgment, will either emphasize those very much or undermine them. The question we are now again faced with is, What are we going to do? I quite agree that there is no point in making great personal attacks on motorists or anybody else, and I do not desire to do so; but one broad fact must be borne in mind: it is that these injuries are in their essence preventable injuries. They did not always occur on the roads. There was a time when the roads were reasonably safe. There were accidents occasionally, but they were very small in number, and were not often very serious. The change was made by the advent of the motor car. It is not a question of attacking anybody; it is merely a fact. That is what happened. Motor cars came and this sprang up into a great, urgent question, and has remained so ever since. That is the broad fact we have to face.

I cannot doubt myself that this thing ought to be preventable, and I cannot see why motors should be, in their essence, mote dangerous than ordinary carriages, except on one point which I will mention. Broadly speaking, the motor is a much more manageable thing than a horse and cart; at any rate it is free from the possible extravagances of the horse. It is a machine entirely under the control of the driver, who has got a means of stopping it with great rapidity compared with what can be done with a horse and cart. In every way, I should have thought, it was essentially and fundamentally a safer kind of vehicle than a horse and cart, except for one thing, and only one thing—namely, the speed at which it goes. There really is nothing else. I know that several of my noble friends dislike that being said, but it is a fact which cannot be avoided. It is not a question of elaborate examination of statistics relating to this condition of affairs and that condition of affairs; the broad fact is that this vehicle is driven at the speed of a railway train with but a very small proportion of the precautions which you apply to a railway train in order to make it safe not only for its passengers but for everybody else.

Therefore, of course, the obvious remedy seems to be diminution of speed —a speed limit. I am bound to say that I see no prospect of a speed limit being adopted, although I think the case for it is overwhelming in principle. However, the motor companies are very powerful and very wealthy and their customers have, unfortunately, a passion for speed. The combination of those two forces has been too great for any Government to face. I do not make a charge against one Government or another, but so far no Government have been prepared to face that combination or, if they have, they have very soon withdrawn. That does not lead me to say there is nothing we can do. The most reverend Primate raised three points. He wanted greater tests for drivers. Of course, that would be all to the good if it were practicable. He wanted the abolition of blind corners. I am not very confident of that being a very effective improvement, although, of course, it ought to be done. I have in my mind's eye at this moment a corner which is very far from blind but which is yet exceedingly dangerous. It is the corner of a turning into the main road and it comes down a slope. I see car after car coming down that slope at, I am quite confident, a great deal more than thirty or forty miles an hour, and sweeping round the corner. There are children in perambulators and things of that kind constantly about. It appears to me, watching it, to be mere accident that they are not all killed every day of the week. However, I do not want to say that blind corners ought not to be abolished, for I am sure they ought.

I think I am right in saying that my noble in end in his speech adopted the point of view that the main weapon to fight this evil was propaganda. I am quite in favour of that. I think it would be a great thing to get into the minds of the people of this country exactly what the evil was and what the causes of it were. I think it would be a good thing to create what does not seem to me now to exist in all sections of the population —namely, an urgent demand and desire that this thing should be stopped, even if it meant a certain amount of inconvenience for this or that class of traffic. There does not seem to me to be any kind of proportion in the matter. People talk as if the thing that really mattered was the reduction of the speed of motor cars and a possible interference with their export, whilst the killing of a few hundreds or thousands of children did not matter very much. Of course I am exaggerating, but that is the kind of attitude which must be destroyed if we are to deal with this evil.

So far as it goes, propaganda is all right. However, we have had a tremendous lot of propaganda lately on all sorts of subjects, some of which has been useful but a great deal of which has not. I cannot help thinking that it has been a little overdone and that there is growing up in the minds of people a feeling, when they see these very interesting diagrams and all the rest of it, "That is propaganda and we do not pay much attention to it." If it is merely going to be advice and recommendations I doubt very much whether you will find that propaganda will make any very important difference to the conditions which exist at the moment. I earnestly beg the Government to consider whether they cannot go a little further than that. I understand they propose to issue an amended High-way Code. That is one of the recommendations of the Committee to which my noble friend referred and I am sure it is an excellent thing. Let it be issued as soon as possible, because the first thing you have got to do is to make precise, as far as you can make precise, the obligation that everybody—motorist, pedestrian and horse-drawn vehicle—has in using the highway—namely, to leave it safe for other users. Therefore I am all for a new Highway Code; let it be issued as promptly as possible. That will give. not absolutely but relatively, a precise code of conduct for all users of the highways.

Then I should like to see the Government go further and say that all those provisions are to be part of the law of the land and that anyone who infringes them shall be punished. I should like that to be the law, but it may be thought to be going too far. At any rate, I do think that they might say that in any case where there has been an accident and it is shown that one of the parties to the accident has infringed the Highway Code, that shall be prima facie evidence of negligence—if of a certain character, negligence involving a sharp punishment, but in any case involving some kind of indemnification for the parties injured. I think that that would be a very moderate change. It would have the extra advantage that people using the highway-I purposely avoid using the word "motorist" because this applies to all who use the highway—would be aware that there was a Code and that if they infringed it they would get into trouble. That would make them pay attention and find out what the Code really was. I am very much afraid that what will happen with regard to this Code will be what has happened so often in the past. People who are coming up for drivers' licences will get it up for that occasion, they will be able to answer any question put to them, and they will he able, no doubt, to carry out the official tests, but they will forget all about it in three weeks. That is what happens with most examinations, and I think it will happen to a large extent with this one. I ask, therefore, for some kind of sanction at the back of the Code, or I am afraid it will not be much use.

As I have already said, I quite understand that the difficulties of enforcing an actual speed limit are very great, and I am satisfied that the Government do not intend to try to enforce it. I do not think any preceding Government ever had the least intention of doing so. For the moment, therefore, at any rate, I must leave aside the possibility of a speed limit. But I do hope that in the Highway Code the Government will develop those portions of the Code which point out the duty of regulating speed according to the circumstances on the road. There are some phrases in the existing Highway Code on that subject, but they do not seem to me to go very far. I should like it to be made very precise that where there is a bad road surface, or whatever the difficulty may be, motorists must look very carefully to the speed at which they are allowing their cars to travel, and modify it if necessary. There ought to be some broad test of this kind: you must always ask yourself whether you have your vehicle under such control that if danger appears you will be able to stop before the accident actually happens. That is the kind of test which everybody should have in mind when driving a car, but certainly many drivers do not appear to have it in mind at all.

I observe that in that same Report the suggestion is made that there should be two classes of road—fast roads and slow roads, the fast roads being for through traffic and the slow roads for local traffic. I have always been very strongly in favour of that proposal, and I hope that some day it will be carried out; but it is obvious that if you are going to do that you will have to have some control of speed on the slow roads or you will not do any good at all, and people will go as fast on the slow roads as on the others. There has been a suggestion that that shall be provided for by making the surface of the slow road such that nobody would care to drive very fast upon it. I do not know whether that is the intention of the passages to which I refer, but it looks rather like it. I do not think that that is a very useful suggestion. I do not think that it could be carried out. It reminds me a little of Sam Weller's friend and the crumpets, the man who was told "If you eat these crumpets you will die," and who thereupon ate the crumpets and shot himself to show that the doctor was wrong. It is no use doing that. I do not believe that you can get round this difficulty by alterations in the surface of the road or that kind of thing.

I do want to press very much, however, for certain changes in the roads. Among other things—I speak now as a country dweller—there ought to be more footpaths. I heard the most reverend Primate say that in the North pedestrians will not walk on the footpaths, and therefore the cars are driven to run on them instead. I hope that that is a little exaggerated. It certainly does not apply to the South of England, where it is quite untrue to say that foot passengers will not use the footpaths. I know that there are some people who do not believe that anything that a pedestrian does can possibly be right. My experience is that pedestrians do use them, but that the footpaths are constantly in such a condition as to be unfit to be used. I can quite understand that a certain type of motorist does not think that anything ought to be done to protect pedestrians, but I do not think that any member of this House belongs to that type of motorist. I am quite sure that there ought to be provision for pedestrians in this way, and I am sure that it would add greatly to the safety of the country roads. There are many other suggestions which could be made, but I shall not trouble your Lordships with them. With regard to London, there is a good deal to be said about crossings and refuges and standing vehicles, but all I venture to ask is that very careful attention should be paid to what is done in some foreign capitals in regard to those questions, which seems to me a great improvement on what we do in this country.

There is one other point that I want to mention. At present, as is well known, a person who is injured has a right of action against the driver, if there is any negligence and other circumstances permit, and the driver has to insure himself against third-party risk so that even if he has himself no money the insurance company will indemnify the person injured. There are several difficulties about that. One of them has been met by the statement of the present Minister of War Transport, that he will arrange for a new kind of corporation, which will deal with cases of cars which are not insured and provide for the payment of the person injured. That, however, is not the only difficulty which arises. There are several others, but I shall mention only one, and that is the case where the vehicle is publicly owned. In that case no action lies against the Crown, and the result that the injured person has no remedy. The Minister of War Transport says: "Yes, the Crown have undertaken to pay whatever could be recovered from a private owner." That means that they pay anything that their Law Officers advise that they ought to pay. I do not think that that is satisfactory. It is very unfair and very hard on the people who have to submit to what is the purely arbitrary decision of a Government official.

Now that the activities of the State are being considerably enlarged, I think it is time to provide that anyone who is injured by an officer of the State shall be able to bring an action against the State or the Government, or whatever the form may be, just as he would against any individual This doctrine that Government vehicles are not liable for tort is an antiquated doctrine which has nothing in its favour in principle, as far as I can see. It is quite unfair that they should not be liable, and, it seems to me, quite inconsistent—to go back a long way—with the great principles of Magna Charta, which laid it down that everybody should be responsible before the law. In this case, if it is Government-owned vehicle it is said that it is in the service of the Crown, that the Crown are not liable for tort and therefore that their servants are not liable for tort. I suggest that the present Government should sweep away something which has nothing to be said for it except a rather unattractive worship of antiquity.

I am sorry to have detained your Lordships for so long, hut this is a subject of great importance. I hope that the Government will put their backs into dealing with it. It is not something which can be dealt with merely casually; we require a continuous and vigorous effort if anything is to be done. I hope that the Government are fully aware of that, as, indeed, the closing words of my noble friend seem to show that they are.

5.35 p.m.

LORD ELTON

My Lords, I trust that the fog which is now obviously increasingly seeping into your Lordships' House, bears no special symbolic relation to this debate, for the subject which the Archbishop has raised seems to me much more important than a great many on which your Lordships spend considerably more time. It is only fair, of course, to remember that this Chamber has devoted much more attention to road accidents than has been given in another place where they have been, over the last ten years, very shamefully neglected—partly, perhaps, because they raise no immediate issues of Party controversy. We have been given the figure of 232,000 casualties on the roads before the war, and I was a little bit astonished, if I may so with all respect, to hear the noble Lord, Lord. Walkden, after referring to pre-war casualties, reduce them merely to the figures of those who have lost their lives. I am sure that there are some parents whose children have been blinded or who may have lost a leg on the road, who would like to feel that your Lordships consider that statistics of wounded also are worthy of the attention of legislators. Let us then take the larger figure, because it does mean horrible mutilations and many life-long incapacities—

LORD WALKDEN

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for a moment to give an explanation? The Ministry were compelled, in the early stages of the war to abandon the practice of giving any details beyond those relating to deaths. That was due to sheer lack of staff. They are now arranging to list the whole of the casualties, not merely the deaths, so that in the future the House will have put before it full returns relating to all casualties.

LORD ELTON

I am very glad to know that. Of course, I was not intending to make any suggestion that the noble Lord himself had anything but the liveliest interest in every form of the road tragedy. But I am speaking at the moment of the astounding pre-war figure of 232,000 which was given for a time when we did have the figures for both types of casualties. And it is an astonishing figure. It is astonishing that the public conscience should apparently have permitted it to continue for all these years without insisting on some very much more drastic remedy. In fact, it is more than astonishing, it is horrifying, for in this atomic age our chances of survival, I think—and the chances of the survival of the human species one might almost say—depend very largely on our success in reviving the humaner traditions of the past and that respect for the sanctity of human life which we have shed so far and so fast during the last ten years.

To me at any rate—and I know I am a crank; everybody has some crank subject and this is my subject—it does seem that the root cause of the trouble is obvious and undeniable. Of course, as there must be in so complex a problem, there is a great variety of contributory factors and all manner of degrees of responsibility. I know that when I drive a car I am perpetually marvelling at the anarchic recklessness of cyclists and pedestrians. When I ride a bicycle—which I very rarely do, I am thankful to say—I am continually terrified by what appears to be a constant succession of near misses registered by all the cars that pass, and when I walk, and find myself a pedestrian on the pavement, I cannot help noting what appear to be the bad manners of motorists and cyclists alike. Yet the fact remains—or it appears to me to remain—that there is only one class of road user who has brought a lethal weapon on to the roads, and that the root causes of the trouble, whatever other contributory factors there may be, is speed.

As the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, has just pointed out, it almost stands to reason—if it had not been so frequently denied one would have supposed that it could not be denied—that it is the appearance of speed on His Majesty's highways which has turned them into a shambles. After all, a vehicle travelling at 30 miles an hour, requires, shall we say, x yards in which to come to a standstill. Precisely the same vehicle travelling at 10 miles per hour requires x plus a good many additional yards before it can pull up. Consequently if the unforeseeable incident occurs, if the child hops unpredictably off the pavement, if the bicyclist does skid almost under the driver's front wheels, the driver is, inevitably, very much more likely to be involved in an accident, and the accident is much more likely to be serious.

Of course, the danger of speed was recognized before the war by the imposition by His Majesty's Government of a universal speed limit in built-up areas. I think that the then Minister of Transport spoke of the "saving mercy of the control of speed." Unfortunately, as the Lord Archbishop has reminded us, and I am sure it will be the experience of most of your Lordships, the speed limit is almost universally ignored today. It is only necessary to drive, as I have to drive almost every day, down a fairly broad stretch of controlled highway, which is usually fairly clear of traffic, to observe, if one glances at one's speedometer, that at least nine out of ten drivers are persistently breaking the law. And why? Because it is almost completely unenforced. A motorist has only to glance in his driving mirror to assure himself that he is not being trailed by any uniformed speed cop, and he knows that he is safe, and then of course temptation begins—temptation to which we all continually yield, I am sure—temptation to save rive minutes and prevent oneself being overtaken by some fellow lawbreaker in pursuit. In probably 99 cases out of 100, and possibly in 999 cases out of a thousand it is all right. But the one-thousandth time one has saved one's five minutes, but at the expense of plunging another family into tragedy and bereavement.

The experiment of using plain clothes traffic police was made before the war in Cardiff and other places. It was very successful; that is to say, it resulted in a considerable number of prosecutions and in a considerable reduction in accidents; but it was never widely copied, largely because it was denounced by a well-known motor manufacturer as un-English to have plain clothes traffic cops. I have, myself, never been able to see why plain clothes traffic police are any more un-English than the plain clothes police who for decades, almost for centuries, have protected us from other forms of crime. But that form of control of speed has certainly never been adopted. It has never looked like being adopted here. No past Minister of Transport, and apparently not the present Minister of Transport either, has yet had the courage to antagonize motorists sufficiently to see that the speed limit really is enforced. And yet nothing would be easier, I contend, than to enforce it if we really wanted it enforced. You cannot enforce it if you just hope it is going to be enforced. If you rely on propaganda you will get another batch of leaflets which no one will read.

There already exists a device—I believe it was exhibited in Parliament shortly before the war—which automatically displays on the outside of the car, by meat s of an indicator, the moment when the speed limit is being exceeded. There is also available another automatic device which could, and I think should, be fitted to vehicles, such as public service vehicles, which are subject to a universal speed limit. This is a device which automatically controls the speed, leaving a reserve of power on which it is possible to draw for an emergency or for the climbing of a hill. I am myself a motorist who has driven cars for well over thirty years and I am ashamed to say that when I am out of doors I am just as often in a car as on my feet. Nevertheless, the statistics of the road massacre and the number of accidents to children are such that I personally feel that until the figures are substantially reduced there ought to be a speed limit not only in urban areas—even although Lord Cecil, that great advocate of safety, was not prepared to recommend it—but outside the urban areas, on every road.

Speed, I am convinced, is the sovereign evil, but I should not like to go on the record as appearing to suggest that it is anything remotely resembling the only evil. Clearly the difference between good and bad driving is of extreme significance. That is not the same as the difference between skilful and unskilful driving. The two most dangerous drivers I ever met were both supremely skilful. I noticed few months ago that a famous motor car manufacturer was widely publicized as having said that a good fast driver was better than a bad slow driver. That is perfectly true, but it is not the fastness of the driver but the goodness of his driving which makes him safe. A slow good driver, if it comes to that, is often better than a bad fast driver. The reliable, considerate driver does not involve himself in accidents. I would hazard a conjecture that none of your Lordships and those associated with you, have ever been involved, through your own fault, in a serious road accident. It is the thoughtless, the selfish, the subnormal, and the inconsiderate who are the reckless drivers, and I am very much afraid that very often those are the young drivers. It would be very interesting to know what was the proportion of serious road accidents among car-owning undergraduates before the war. I well remember immediately after the last war, the war of 1914–18, the thrill of horror which ran through my own university when it became known that an undergraduate had killed a man through falling asleep at the wheel when driving back at night in his car. Alas, in the last few years that became all too common and I myself knew an undergraduate who killed two people on two separate occasions. He was not actually congratulated by the coroner but he escaped with not so much as a sixpenny fine on each occasion.

That leads me to my last point. If we were ever blessed by having a Minister of Transport determined to deal seriously with this problem, I am sure that at whatever initial cost to his popularity, he would begin by turning his attention to what has already been mentioned by the Lord Archbishop and Lord Cecil—the question of uniformity of penalties. Penalties differ unpredictably and quite inexplicably. It is most necessary that they should be more uniform and that there should be much more suspension of licences for reckless driving and, in particular, for drunken driving. As for habitual offenders on the road, none, of course, ought to exist. As habitual offenders they ought to have lost their licences long before. It was reported in the case of a young man before the war, casually and almost without comment, that he had received more than 100 convictions for motoring offences. The motorist is, of course, not the only offender. I do not think any noble Lord who has taken part in this debate has suggested that he is and I am extremely anxious to see the penalties against the cyclist just as strictly enforced. Cyclists ride not three abreast, as one noble Lord has said just now, but five or six abreast. The law against them, or against the pedestrian who crosses when the lights are against him, should be just as strictly enforced.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is the car which turns the road into a shambles. Is there any hope, in spite of what I cannot help thinking was the disappointing statement made by Lord Walk-den, that some Minister in the present Government may yet take this matter seriously in hand? The present administration represents a Party which professes to believe, and I think that it genuinely does believe, that the safety and happiness of the many is of much more importance than the convenience of the few. If we are blessed by having such a Minister—I hope he may come before the highways are blackened with the tens of thousands of cheap cars capable of very high speeds —I am sure that he will not fumble about with propaganda. Children have been the targets, the victims I would almost say, of an almost endless stream of propaganda for the last twenty years. At this moment they are an increasingly high proportion of the victims on the roads. As Lord Cecil has just said, we are all tired of propaganda. To think that we can hear a Minister say that after twenty years of tragedy all we can do is to issue leaflets is absurd. Put out all the propaganda you like, you will not prevent the child from being careless. You have got to go a great deal further than that if you wish to preserve his life.

If we do wish to reduce these statistics to civilized proportions, in my view the Minister who will one day come and be compelled to take action will, in the first place, impose a speed limit of thirty miles per hour in the built-up areas and of forty-five miles per hour on all highways. He will rigidly enforce both, and will not allow the limits to be ignored as they are now. He will take steps to see that there are uniform penalties and that all classes of road users whose inconsiderate action leads to death or injury on the road are liable to severe penalties, probably including a substantial term of imprisonment. He will not be popular. It will be a formidable task to undertake; but after two years the casualties will be halved, and then they will be halved again. And at the end of three years he can go to the public and ask them if they would like the Code relaxed or whether they would like to return to the former casualty rate.

5.54 P.m.

THE MARQUESS OF READING

My Lords, I should like to intervene as one of the seven members of your Lordships' House who formed what is now known as the Alness Committee. We do not, on that account, arrogate to ourselves the title of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but it is gratifying to feel, after a number of years have elapsed, that what we did was a useful piece of work. The last sentence in that Report, which has now become one of its more notorious phrases, expresses the hope that it will not find a resting place in the pigeon-holes of Whitehall. Six and a half years have elapsed, and perhaps it is something to be thankful for that it has not found a resting place in the pigeon nests of Trafalgar Square. At the same time, the gratitude of the Committee is due to the various people who, in the interval, have taken the Report out and dusted it and put it back again. I am bound to say that I did this afternoon see some sign of its being kept on the Minister's desk and not being put back in the pigeon-hole. That immediately raised fresh hopes in what was becoming my rather pessimistic breast.

The Alness Report made two main divisions of its recommendations—segregation, which is physical; and education, which is psychological. As regards education, the Government are obviously working on those lines and are prepared in the near future to introduce the kind of campaign that we had in mind. If I may say so, I think it was a pity that on the eve of that campaign the noble Lord who has just spoken and subsequently disappeared, Lord Elton, thought fit to condemn any attempt at propaganda before it had had a chance to prove itself. I am bound to say, so far as the children went, we saw little hope except in an effective and widespread system of propaganda such as we ventured to suggest.

The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, in connexion with that propaganda, spoke of the Highway Code, and he proceeded to make rather tentatively, suggesting that he was saying something that was rather revolutionary and was not likely to be adopted, the suggestion that the Highway Code should be given the force of law. That is one of the recommendations of the Alness Report and, for my own part, I hope it will he adopted. There was this further recommendation in connexion with the Highway Code which I should like the Government to consider. If my recollection be right, we recommended that it should not be issued as one document for circulation to every household in the country, irrespective of whether the people kept motor cars, rode bicycles, or walked on their feet. Our view was that the Highway Code dealing primarily with motorists, when received in the house of a person who had not got a motor car, was very likely to be thrown aside, the man or woman remarking: "This is nothing to do with me." What we recommended was that there should be three versions of the Highway Code: the cyclist should have one, the motorist should have one and the pedestrian should have one, and it should be made perfectly plain to him what his particular duties and responsibilities were under that Code. I always had frankly this reservation in mind on that subject: that you do not want to create more offences than you need. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, quoted just now, as evidence of the success of the scheme of having plain clothes policemen, the fact that it had resulted in a large number of additional prosecutions.

LORD ELTON

May I interrupt the noble Marquess? I was careful to add that it had also resulted in a substantial reduction in accidents.

THE MARQUESS OF READING

I quite accept the correction. At the same time, so far as my own view goes, I find it very difficult to regard the increase in the number of prosecutions as evidence that useful work is being done. That brings me to a remark I want to make on the main question of roads, which forms the second part of the Alness Report. You have had a period of comparatively little traffic, but accidents have, if anything, gone up. You have got a period now when one day, when Sir Stafford Cripps is in an expansive mood, a number of motor cars may be released in this country, even for the use of citizens of this country. When that time comes the roads will no doubt have a very heavy burden to bear. My recollection is that the Ministry of Transport told us, at the time of the Alness Committee, that1,000 new vehicles were coming on to the roads every month. With the greater skill in mass production acquired during the war, that rate will no doubt have increased, although the cars may not all perform the feat of attaining 100 miles an hour such as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, seems inclined at attribute to them.

But you will get an increased number of vehicles and they will be released on a public whose road sense has diminished in the past six and a half years because of the decrease in the volume of traffic on the roads. We all know, if we have been away on holiday—perhaps I should say that we all may remember that in the days when we used to go away for holidays—to a fairly isolated place or even for voyages on the sea and came back to London, the volume, the speed and the noise of the traffic were at first overwhelming, and it took one a perceptible period of time before one recovered one's poise and indifference. Now you have a situation in which, after six and a half years of relatively little traffic, you are going to have an increased number of vehicles released on the roads which themselves have had to bear during those six and a half years an immense volume of extremely heavy traffic without the normal amount of repair. The wonder is that they have stood up to the traffic as well as they have. Therefore I hope that the Government have before them a real plan for the development of the roadways of this country.

One or two of the speeches that have been made this afternoon have given the atmosphere and suggestion that motoring was still a great luxury instead of having become a great industry. Really, in these days any Government, whatever its complexion, has a duty to the country at large to provide it with a proper system of roads. Even before the war—and this is in the Alness Report, if I am right in my recollection—the density of traffic on the roads of this country was greater than the density of traffic in any other country in the world. There were some 13 vehicles per mile in this country, 9 in America, and 5½ in France. If we are going to keep up in economic and industrial life, that is a situation with which we shall have to deal in order to give greater opportunity for expansion of industry and commerce.

I personally hope that the Ministry of Transport will assume the widest possible control over the roads of this country in order to bring them into harmonious correlation with each other and with the scheme of roads as a whole, instead of sharing that responsibility too much with the local authority. After all, this is an era of nationalization of almost everything except the Government itself—and even that may come. It is a moment when great things can be done, and great things ought to be done, as far as the roads are concerned. The Alness Committee recommended what was in those days not an easy thing to carry out, and that was that a representative area should be selected in this country for the trial of any possible device that could be produced. Then there were great difficulties; now, unfortunately owing to enemy action, in many parts of the country those difficulties have disappeared, and in areas concentrating upon places like Southampton, Portsmouth and other big towns which have been heavily bombed, where you have a clear space to start from, it would, and I suggest should, be a very valuable experiment to try out every device that you can for the safety of the public.

One last point. We attached most importance not to the frequency of prosecutions but to adequate warnings. From that point of view the mobile police patrols —they were conveniently called "Courtesy Cops "—had already produced very remarkable results. Given the opportunity and the men—I agree the men have not been available during the war—they would, I am quite sure, produce still further results in the future. Your Lordships may remember that Lancashire was where the main experiment was tried out. I think it is right to say that in the period of the experiment the accident total had been reduced by 46 per cent. in a comparatively short time. Over one area of road upon which attention had been concentrated, comparing the same month in the previous year and the actual year, the fall, owing to the presence and the efforts of the "Courtesy Cops," amounted to as much 73 per cent. As soon as men arc available, and long before new roads can be built, that is a step which should be taken. I hope no Treasury fetters will be allowed to impede the development and elaboration of that scheme. There are numbers of other devices which may well be tried in the course of time, but obviously the main burden of the attempt must be to eliminate accidents at the earliest possible moment.

As to the suggested speed limit, surely the time for that has gone. In the early days of railways people thought that a train was proceeding at a wholly breakneck and intolerable speed if it went at twenty miles an hour. I am old enough to remember the early days of motoring when there was a twenty-miles-an-hour speed limit on motor cars and when policemen popped up from behind hedges in totally unpopulated areas in the heart, of the country and you were fined for going over twenty miles an hour. After a very short space of time a code was evolved between motorists, who gave each other signals that there was a police trap down the road and the policeman in consequence spent an extremely boring day. That is all going back to a policy of repression and that, I think, is the wrong approach. The right approach is a policy of education, both by propaganda and by the services of the mobile police patrols. If we start to work along those lines in a sustained effort we may, in a little time, have reduced the casualties on our roads from the level of a great military campaign to the level of a minor engagement.

6.9 p.m.

LORD MORRISON

My Lords, before I venture to make a very brief contribution to this most interesting debate, I feel that I owe your Lordships an apology for my presumption, after only a few hours' membership of this House, in offering that contribution. The explanation of my haste in this matter is fairly simple, if I may be allowed to give it. It is about twenty-three years since- I entered another place after an exciting General Election. A few days afterwards I was approached, while I was in a very similar position to that in which I have been during the last hour, by a person who belonged to an indefinable organization of which some of your Lordships may have heard—"the usual channels." I was approached by the usual channels and informed that a friendly debate was about to take place on unemployment and that it would be an excellent opportunity for me to make a few harmless and inoffensive remarks by way of my opening speech. As the hours wore on the friendliness of the debate appeared to become less evident and by the evening a political storm of the first magnitude had blown up. A message was sent to me from the aforementioned usual channels that I had better keep my speech in my pocket until the storm died down. So I passed the whole night until six o'clock in the morning, when a minor official of the usual channels—a sort of unpaid lance-corporal—wriggled his way along to me past the dozing bodies of some of my colleagues and whispered to me that Mr. Speaker was going to call me next. That dreadful experience, all those years ago, I have never forgotten. Therefore it is my dread that if I delay too long after my entry into your Lordships' House something similar might again happen to me, that has prompted me to rise only a day after my introduction in order to make my maiden speech.

This has been a most interesting debate. I would like to make one main suggestion which has not yet been mentioned, because I think your Lordships require to have all the information that is possible on this matter. My suggestion is that the three Ministers concerned, the Home Secretary, the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Education, should get together as quickly as possible in order to see whether it is not possible to embark on a campaign, not only of putting leaflets into people's houses and not only of publishing a multitude of statistics. I fear we are getting a little tired of statistics in this country and in any case they do not always convey the meaning that those who send them out wish to convey. They remind me sometimes of the old soldier who, after the South African War, used to stand outside Waterloo Station with a placard round his neck which said upon it Kind friends, have pity on me. I am an old soldier. Battles, 6; wounds, 5; children, 4; total, 15." I think the days when we could put up a series of statistics and think they were going to affect anything are gone. My suggestion is. a much more practical one. I want the Ministers concerned to get together to devise a campaign to make the people of this country, and particularly the children, road-minded.

A local authority in North London with which ii am not entirely unconnected took a practical step in that direction. Not long before the beginning of the last war we took 6½ acres in one of our large public parks and we laid it out as a complete traffic area,' with first-class roads, second-class roads, blind turnings, blind corners, telephone boxes, police control boxes, traffic lights and everything necessary to complete the picture. When it was ready the traffic area was opened by the late Mr. Leslie Burgin, who at that time was Minister of Transport. It was an immediate success. Every day many classes of school children with their teachers came down to the traffic area. They were accompanied by policemen. In addition, we had a garage constructed containing a large number of children's motor cars, fairy cycles and even scooters. The children then proceeded to go on this miniature traffic. area and the Highway Code was rigidly enforced. Any chili breaking any of the rules of the Highway Code was immediately turned out of the area altogether and, believe me, that was a very dreadful punishment. The children were, as we say, "Sent to Coventry" as not fit to take part in the game—for, after all, it was a game. Still further to improve it, we let schoolboys put on a miniature policeman's uniform and stand beside the traffic policeman to direct the traffic.

The success of this venture, and the enthusiasm with which the children entered into it, were remarkable. When it had been going for about a month, the school holidays came along, and we wondered what would happen. We had not long to wait, because the children from all over North London descended on that traffic area in their thousands, arid there were not nearly enough cycles arid small motor cars to be hired out. So they brought their own toy motor cars, their own cycles, and their own roller-skates, perambulators, and even dogs. A rough calculation was that over 70,000 children came to that area during the school holidays; and, what was equally important, many of their parents came with them, and stood outside the traffic area in order to watch the merry game which went on inside. Unfortunately, before we- had time to get this great experiment really going and learn the lessons which I am sure we should have learnt from it, and make the improvements necessary, the war broke out. As your Lordships know, most of our children were evacuated and the whole scheme fell into disuse. Now that the war is over and the children have come home again, the local authority concerned is endeavouring to get back the apparatus and get the game in working order again. My suggestion is that this experiment, which I have attempted, I fear very inadequately, to describe, is well worth the attention of the three Ministers concerned, and I hope that they will give attention to it.

6.27 p.m.

EARL HOWE

My. Lords, I am sure that your Lordships would wish me, on your behalf, to convey our most sincere congratulations to my old friend and political antagonist, whom I knew for so many years in another place, on the delightful speech with which he has just entertained us. I hope from the bottom of my heart that we shall hear many more such speeches from him. This debate has proceeded on all too familiar lines. I have been present for many years in your Lordships' House, and have listened to debate after debate on this subject, some introduced by the most reverend Primate, some by Lord Buck-master, and others by the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood. The trouble is that in every one of those debates the argument put up by noble Lords such as Lord Elton and Lord Cecil of Chelwood, and by the most reverend Primate, has always been the same—that these accidents are entirely a question of speed and nothing else.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

I hope that the noble Earl will forgive me for interrupting him, but I made it quite clear that I did not believe that the accidents were entirely due to speed, and that I did not entirely blame the motorists.

EARL HOWE

I accept the correction, and I ask the most reverend Primate to forgive me for associating his name with what I said. The burden of the argument, however, is nearly always that accidents are a question of speed. We have had the Alness Committee since the other debates to which I referred, and in my humble judgment the Alness Committee was one of the most able Committees which has ever been set up by your Lordships' House. Look at the efforts which they made to get to the root of the problem! They examined seventy-five witnesses, some 8,000 questions were asked, and forty-nine organizations and interests submitted memoranda. The Report of the Alness Committee does not bear out the arguments produced this afternoon to show that accidents are entirely a question of speed. We have been given figures for the total number of people killed on the roads. I hope the most reverend Primate has forgiven me for interrupting him and asking him what probably seemed a very silly question; but in the popular mind it is always a question of motorists. What is a motorist? When you speak of motorists, do you refer to the drivers of public service vehicles, National Fire Service vehicles, goods vehicles, Service vehicles, the drivers of motor cycles and so on? I submit to your Lordships that in the public mind the term "motorist" means the driver of a private car, and when you talk about motorists to the ordinary man in the street he merely thinks of the driver of the private car.

The driver of the private car is only one section of the problem. I believe I am correct in saying—no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Walkden, will correct me if I am wrong—that if you take the number of fatal accidents caused by mechanically-propelled vehicles, you will find that the private car is responsible for only between 12 and 12½ per cent. It all goes to show how difficult figures are. In the latest return of accidents there are included accidents caused by such vehicles as trams, but that is not made clear in any of the figures issued by the Department. I happen to have been during the war stationed at a town in the North of England where in one year 15 people were killed by trams. The road problem is not merely a question of motor cars but of all road users, and I am anxious to see the question stated clearly and accurately.

I am sure that we all want to get to the root of the problem, and any competent lorry driver could tell your Lordships what the problem is. The main section of the problem is, unfortunately, the recklessness and heedlessness of pedestrians. I know that the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, will probably attack me for saying so, but it is none the less true. Any one who drives a motor vehicle on the roads of this country knows that the great body of pedestrians do not observe the Highway Code. I do not know that they have ever heard of it, or at any rate read it. Where there are footpaths they will not use them. Very large numbers of them walk in the road in preference to using the footpaths, as the most reverend Primate has told us this afternoon. The result is danger to everybody and fatal accidents. Yet noble Lords come here and put the blame almost exclusively on the motorist, and particularly on the private driver.

What is the use of setting up a Select Committee, as we have done in this House, if you are not prepared to attach some weight to its recommendations? Since that Select Committee sat, another Committee has been started by the Ministry of War Transport. I cannot understand why it was ever set up. It contains five representatives from the Ministry of War Transport, one from the Home Office, one from the Ministry of Education, one from the Ministry of Information, and one from the Scottish Home Department. It has three representatives of the Police, and five of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. But it has no representative of any single motoring organization, and yet it is their help which you want when you try to make your campaign for safety on the roads effective. I cannot understand why that Committee, which is called the Committee on Road Safety, was ever set up. I do not know whether it was because the Alness Committee, in thirteen of their recommendations, very severely criticized the Ministry of Transport, as I am sure that the noble Viscount the Leader of the House will remember, and in five more of its recommendations criticized the Ministry by implication. Perhaps this new Committee has been set up in order to torpedo the Alness Report; I do not know.

We have been talking about bind corners. This is what this so-called Committee on Road Safety says about blind corners: We consider that each case should be considered on its merits, and that accident frequency at a site should be the determining factor, except where the conditions are clearly such as to justify immediate remedial measures. In other words, you have got to wait and see how many people can be killed at the blind corner before anybody is going to do anything about it. That is not the way to deal with the road problem, either short-term or long-term. If you arc going to have a responsible Committee set up under the Government to deal with things like that, then I have not much faith in a Government Committee. I am not entirely ignorant of what goes on at these public safety committees, for I myself sat on one. It was the one which drafted the Highway Code. The Minister was frightfully interested in us when we started, but as our work went on his interest seemed to evaporate, and finally we were no longer summoned to any meetings. I suppose, therefore, that the Committee was dissolved, but we were never told that that was so.

With regard to safety on the roads, the Highway Code has been mentioned. Here for once am delighted to feel that I can entirely agree with the noble Viscount opposite. He wants to see the Highway Code given the 'force of law. So do I and so did the Alness Committee. But the Committee on Road Safety says no, do not give it the force of law, it would be too difficult. I hope that the Minister will be ruthless with the so-called Committee on Road Safety, and that he will insist on the Highway Code being redrafted and given the force of law. Another suggestion that I should like to make is that when an accident has occurred the vehicle or vehicles concerned should he tested as to fitness for use on the roads. It would be important, for example, to test the brakes. I think that is a thing that might very well be clone, and if a vehicle were found to have brakes that were inefficient or had tyres some other defect I think that that might be treated as prima facie evidence of negligence. Then I do want, if I may, strongly to support the suggestion made by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, about "Courtesy Cops." I consider that that is an invaluable suggestion. There is no doubt that the success of that experiment in Lancashire was really astounding. If that system could be extended to other areas in the country it also would be of the utmost possible value. Further, I would like to support as strongly as possible the suggestion about an experimental area. Let us have one by all means. Surely we have a better chance to get one now than we have ever had before and have it laid out according to the suggestions of the Memoranda on Road Construction that the Ministry of Transport has produced. Let us show what really can be done by efficient road design and engineering.

There are a lot of other things I wanted to say but I am anxious not to prolong this debate unduly. The points which I have mentioned are the principal ones that I had in mind, and I do beg that when people talk about accidents on the roads they will not try to fasten all the blame on the drivers of the vehicles. With regard to the case of children, I entirely support what the noble Lord opposite has just said. I believe that an experiment of a similar character was carried out in Salford as well as in Tottenham and I think it was attended with equally satisfactory results. I hope that it will be further extended, for undoubtedly it is a good thing. It is a sort of game for the children arid it interests and amuses them. Many of the children so educated could give adults a really good lesson on how to behave. I will not further take up your Lordships' time but will conclude by thanking you for giving me the chance to take part in this debate.

6.30 p.m.

LORD SELSDON

My Lords, I propose to take up very little of your time, but being one of the younger members of your Lordships' House and also a keen motorist I would like to contribute one or two words to this very interesting debate. Surely one of the chief causes of these terrible accidents on the roads is that the pedestrian does not think of the difficulties of the motorist, he does not think of the difficulties of the cyclist, and in certain eases the motorist does not think of the difficulties of either party. His Majesty's Government are about to embark on a large propaganda scheme. I would like to see on the front page of every one of the national daily newspapers every day the figures showing so many killed and so many people injured. That, I am convinced, is the only way to impress people with the seriousness of, say, just walking across the road to look at a shop and not pausing to look either way, and furthermore, not even pausing—and this applies particularly to the big towns—to look at the condition of the road surface, to see if it is wet. A motorist may be coming along at only five miles an hour when somebody steps off the kerb. The road is wet—I have in mind the particular case of Hyde Park Corner. The motorist puts the brakes on. What happens? The car skids and hits the pedestrian, another car, following close behind, hits the first car, and so it goes on. Just a little consideration, just a pause to think "Maybe I cannot get across the road in time," would have saved an accident.

I can remember some years ago—it was about 1934—when I was in Berlin, that I wanted to cross a road. I walked across, for I thought that it was quite clear. A few moments later I was looking in a shop window when a very large and very fierce looking policeman came and tapped me on the shoulder. I was not unnaturally rather alarmed. He explained very politely to me what I had done and how naughty I had been. He suggested that I should contribute ten marks to the German Winter Fund, which I did, but I did not cross the road at Berlin in the wrong place again.

But it does seem to me that the motorist at the moment is the only person who is being blamed. We have had some very interesting statistics about accidents caused, presumably, by motor vehicles, but we have had no statistics of accidents caused by pedestrians and I do not suppose we shall ever get them. However, the point is that something has got to be done and I understand that His Majesty's Government are embarking on a large scheme of motor roads. I do heartily endorse the idea and I hope that they will have an experimental area where they can try out everything in the way of the latest ideas. It is perfectly possible to get machines in these days which will lay roads in a ridiculously short space of time —at the rate, I believe, of as much as a mile in an hour or something like that. If that could be done, now that the age of the internal combustion engine has really come and we are out of the era of the red flag going ahead of the motor car, could not we have roads on the same lines as railways where it will be impossible for any of these people, of whom we have been speaking, to stray? I do not suggest that that could be done in the towns but that they should run between our big towns. I do not wish to take up any more of your Lordships' time now because there are several other and much better speakers who wish to say something.

6.35 p.m.

VISCOUNT LONG

My Lords, it is my delight to be able to congratulate the noble Lord who has just sat down, on his delightful and sincere speech. It is all the more delightful to me because I had the privilege of serving with his father in another place in years gone by. I do not need to detain your Lordships for any length of time. The debate which has been raised by the most reverend Primate has been very interesting indeed, especially to me when I recall the debates which took place here when I was in another place. I agree with the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, in his reference to these attacks upon motorists, and upon the driver of the lorry, which I understand is included in the term, "the driver of the vehicle." It has been my privilege for fifteen years to be in close contact with these drivers; I have lived their life. I had the honour of taking the late Mr. Leslie Burgin, who was Minister of Transport, as mate to a driver and he looked the part. We took him 75 miles from London to Birmingham. I may say to the most reverend Primate that if he undertook a similar journey he would only be copying the famous highwayman who rode from London to York! He would have a most interesting experience, which would prove, as it did to the then Minister of Transport, how magnificent is the driving of these lorry drivers at a speed of only 20 miles an hour. I want you to understand that point quite clearly. At the end of the journey the Minister got out and said, "It is quite obvious that not only is the driving of this man magnificent, but that the speed limit of 20 miles should go and that it should be raised to 30 miles per hour." On that long trip he saw only one case of bad driving.

I had the honour to serve in this war. Where should we be in these clays if it had not been for the magnificent driving which was done in the days of the "Blitz"? A link in the chain would never have been forged had it not been for the gallant driving of the drivers at that time, both in private motor cars and in lorries. Why certain of your Lordships should always try to blame the motorist I do not know. Speaking as a magistrate, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Morrison, that there should be education. I believe in trying to find things out as the "Courtesy Cops" did in Lancashire. I believe that as a magistrate, but how many other people in the country ire doing it? Eighteen months ago on three occasions I had an average of eighty cases brought before me. What were the cases? They were for having no lamps on cycles. It was not until I discovered that these were Service bicycles and that the Government Department was an accessory to the crime, and was allowing these machines to be turned out without lamps of any description, that I could take steps to have that rectified. Since then we have hardly had a case in six months.

The noble Viscount said that pedestrians walk on the paths. I think he would have a terrible shock if he saw the amount of space which the pedestrians take up on our roads. I want to ask if it would be possible to do something about that. I believe that several thousands of lives were saved during the war through an order issued by the War Office, and I believe by the other two Services, that all Service men were to walk on the right of the road. By walking there they face the traffic coming towards them; and they have not got to turn and look over their shoulders to see what is coming behind. I do not know whether that point has been included in the suggestions put forward in the new Highway Code. I venture to suggest that that is a way in which pedestrians could walk with far greater ease, and that there would be far fewer accidents if they were told to walk on the right of the road. We do not have any powers for that in my part of the world.

I do not know if any of your Lordships have ever stood at a halt sign. I have made it my business to take a census of pedestrians at a halt sign, and I suggest that you should look and see how many pedestrians stop at one. I guarantee that nine out of ten will not stop. The pedestrian thinks he can go on walking, but there is an order there for him to stop. I venture to think that you will find that that is the case. I should like to agree with what Lord Morrison has said about the children. I should like to see every school teacher given two periods in which to deal with this. I had a letter yesterday about an invitation to a lecturer from London to demonstrate in a school the dangers of accidents. That is something which should be carried out in every school. If every teacher could take the children down to tile halt sign I believe that that is a form of propaganda which would be worth more than anything else because it would be practical experience. I am only making these suggestions—having, I am glad to say, a clean licence for thirty-five years—from my own personal experience.

One other point I want to talk about is the question of trunk roads. A most wonderful trunk road has been made in a southern county towards Horley. It is a marvellous trunk road, a dual road, with roundabouts and everything else. Tonight we are suffering from a thick fog. I suppose that if a man were killed at this particular spot, the accident would be blamed on the motorist, but the fact is that a Government Department has taken this brand new road and parked lorries on it. When you come round the roundabout you are faced head-on with a bunch of lorries, which have been parked there for many weeks. We can act in a case like that. On these dual roads we should not allow these things to take place; we should see that these trunk roads are kept clear for the purposes for which they are made, for the carriage of heavy traffic.

I should like to say one last word about our export trade. The bridges of this country should be strengthened at once. Already there has been an example in Yorkshire of a bridge subsiding when a lorry went over it. The whole thing fell into the river. There is another example at Hove. There, a big electrical factory nearby which wants to export its goods, cannot do so unless the bridge is strengthened. The bridges have to carry loads of 25 to 250 tons. They should be strengthened so that we can go forward for the purpose which we all have at heart, of making our country one which is fit for heroes to live in and in which there is safety on the roads.

6.44 p.m.

THE DUKE OF RICHMOND

My Lords, I had intended to touch on details as well as on the general aspect of this road casualty situation, but in view of the very brilliant speeches which many of your Lordships have made, and in view of the fact that the ground is so well covered, I have very little to add. I shall not therefore in any way delay matters. As we come towards the end of this debate, I find myself with a feeling of very great optimism. I could not have said the same thing at a debate in your Lordships' House in which I took part some years before the war, almost immediately prior to the setting up of the Select Committee. On this occasion, however, I do sense the fact that we mean to get something done and we mean to get it done the right way. The fact that all we can do for the moment has been clearly stated to be mainly in the way of propaganda, must be treated by us, I feel, with a little patience. What gives me a feeling of optimism is the knowledge that the road situation—the remaking and the reconstruction of the roads—is going to be handled. That is the fundamental trouble, and there is no necessity for me to stress the point at this moment.

I think your Lordships have been extremely fortunate in having here to-day the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, who was a member of that exceedingly brilliant Select Committee. The Alness Report has been very much referred to, and rightly so, throughout the afternoon, and I think we can say that there we have the information. We have the prescription for less accidents in that Report, and directly the Government get on with implementing the recommendations made there I think the situation will ease. Indeed, it is rather regrettable that we find ourselves here, in this year of 1945, debating the subject of remaking and reconstructing the roads, since your Lordships will know so well that the roads are in this lamentable state at present entirely because the money which should have been spent on them years ago, which incidentally came from the pockets of the much-blackguarded motorists, was used by successive Chancellors of the Exchequer for practically every other purpose conceivable. I think that day is over. I have this feeling of optimism because I think something is really going to happen; therefore I will not detain your Lordships another moment.

6.48 p.m.

LORD WALERAN

My Lords, I, like my noble friend the Duke of Richmond, am very pleased to find that I, too, have a feeling of optimism. I have been present and have taken part in debates on this subject in your Lordships' House prior to the war, and on those occasions one always felt that a distinction was being made between the rights of various road users—the liberty of the one, the licence of the other. To-day I feel that your Lordships' House all through is seeing that all road users have the same responsibility. The noble Lord who spoke earlier on, talked about the difficulty the police have in trying to find a pedestrian who has caused an accident. It was my privilege at the beginning of this war. while I was waiting to go into the Royal Air Force, to walk on a beat as a Special. Police Constable in G Division. I have seen an accident caused by a pedestrian to two vehicles. The pedestrian darted off the sidewalk and caused the motorist—I would rather use the words "driver of the vehicle"—to swerve and hit the other vehicle, causing damage and injury. Then the pedestrian got back into the crowd and there was nothing one could do to find out who he was. The noble Lord, I gather, does not understand me. The pedestrian left the sidewalk, causing a motor vehicle to swerve and hit another vehicle. There was damage to both vehicles and one of the drivers was injured. The fault was that of the pedestrian who got back into the crowd, and one could not apprehend him. Yet motorists are blamed for accidents.

We have had some statistics to-day. I would like to ask whether it is not a fact that a very considerable proportion of accidents come within. the thirty-mile-an-hour limit. I believe that to be the case, My noble friend Viscount Cecil talked of the necessity for speed limits. It is not a question of speed limits: it is a question of the right speed for the right condition of traffic. If you fix a speed limit of thirty miles an hour—and I know this he s been said in previous debates—a lot of people think that if they are going et twenty miles an hour they are not to blame for anything that happens. There are many conditions when ten miles an hour is too fast. We had some other statistics given, and my noble friend Lord Sandhurst interrupted on the question of Service vehicles. We were told that accident figures had dropped and there were fewer motors on the road. I question that. I know there may have been fewer cars, but I rather believe that if you took all the Service vehicles at the time, the number was probably as large as before the war. You should take in the American vehicles and our own Army, Navy and Air Force vehicles. I think it is very misleading if statistics are given which do not include the total vehicles on the road at the time. Surely it is a question of total mileage done by all the vehicles in 'the country, not a question of what kind of vehicle is concerned. We want to get down to an accident rate.

Your Lordships may remember that on the 7th June, 1939, a Motion was tabled by my noble friend Lord Sandhurst your Lordships' House, which went to a Division and which was adopted. A number of the members of your Lordships' House, including the noble Viscount, the Leader of the House, voted for that Motion and we defeated the Government of the day—not the Coalition Government, but the Conservative Government. It was on the question of motor patrols. The noble Marquess, Lord Reading, I see, has left the House, but I would most heartily endorse what he said with regard to motor patrols in Lancashire, which was the subject of the debate. We asked for a Government grant of an extra 25 per cent. over and above the 50 per cent. for making more of those patrols. The interesting thing is that not only did those patrols reduce by 46 per cent. the number of accidents in the area, but they reduced the number of prosecutions by something like 35 per cent., if my memory serve me rightly. So I entirely disagree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who says that plain clothes policemen increased the number of prosecutions. The point is that uniformed motor patrols not only reduced accidents but reduced prosecutions also, which is what we want to do.

We have heard of the extravagance of the horse; there is an extravagance of the weather to-night, and it may be difficult for some of us to get home. Therefore I will not take up more of your Lordships' time except to say that we must keep in front of us the idea that we want liberty for all road users and we cannot allow licence for any one section.

6.55 p.m.

LORD SANDHURST

My Lords, I do not propose to take up much of your time, but there are three points I wish to make. The question of education has been very much to the fore to-night. There is one form of education which, to my mind, is most important and which has not been mentioned at all—namely, the education of car and lorry drivers. If you live in Kensington at the present time you will know that the back streets are a menace. Cars with the letter "L" on them chase down Cromwell Road, up Exhibition Road and down Queen's Gate. I counted 13 in Queen's Gate as I went up it the other day. That will give you some idea of the situation. What I want to know is how qualified are the instructors in those cars to teach anybody. I am perfectly certain, from some of the driving I saw, that the instructors have no qualifications at all. They were men I would not have allowed to drive and in some cases I do not believe they could have passed the test themselves. The driving of their pupils was certainly dreadful.

My second point is in relation to the "Courtesy Cops." I have a suggestion to make which may possibly commend itself to your Lordships. We have in this country a body of men which is extraordinarily well suited to help the police with the "Courtesy Cop" problem. I refer to the Special Constabulary. I will give you one reason why I think these men are extraordinarily well suited for that task. The average "Special" likes to go on the job, to do his job and, when he quits, to know that he has finished and has not got to go to court the next day. He is, therefore, not chasing a conviction and he will consequently be a first-class fellow to stop people and to say: "Look here, do you realize what you did? Do not you realize that that is a most dangerous thing to do?" He has no incentive to produce a conviction and to run a fellow in; he has every incentive to be courteous about it. The suggestion also has the advantage that if the Special Constabulary are doing that, an interesting job is being made for them, they are being kept occupied and they are being given a sense of road responsibility. Therefore they, as well as the public, are being educated.

My third point concerns a question which I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Walkden, mention, a question which the noble Earl behind me has raised and spoken about many times—namely, the question of the underground garage. I do not know how optimistic your Lordships are, but I personally do not feel that we can say war has finished for ever. Underground garages could be, and should be, built as air raid shelters and in that way they would serve two purposes. During times of peace they could be used as shelters for motor cars and as protection for the people who use the road, and if we are unfortunate enough to be in-involved in another war the motor cars could be put out and people put in.

6.59 p.m.

THE MINISTER OF CIVIL AVIATION (LORD WINSTER)

My Lords, we have had a most interesting and valuable debate, and also a long one, in the course of which a great many questions have been addressed to the Government. At this hour I propose, without any preamble whatever, to get straight on with the task of answering those questions. The most reverend Primate put three questions to me. He asked first that the driving test should be reimposed for those applying for licences. The reply is that the driving test will be reinstituted as soon as the necessary driving examiners are available. The Ministry hope that that will be in the early part of the new year. That, I think, in part answers the point just raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst. Then the most reverend Primate referred to the work of the Alness Committee and to the necessity for eliminating blind corners. Bad accident spots will be improved as soon as the necessary labour is available and roads are at the present moment being surveyed for that purpose. The question of labour is the decisive one at the' moment. The third question which the most reverend Primate addressed to me concerned the enforcement of the speed limit. The enforcement of the speed limit depends on the police, and real enforcement cannot be achieved without additions to the police forces. The 30-mile-per-hour speed limit operates in all built-up areas unless the roads are specially exempted by order. The war-time 20-mile-per-hour limit in built-up areas at night was revoked last September. The question of the enforcement of the speed limit does depend in great part upon the availability of sufficient police forces.

I listened with particular interest to the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil. I would beg him not to despise statistics so much. I would agree that their value can be overrated and that they can be made a fetish to the exclusion of the real point at issue; but nevertheless, in determining the causes of accidents, statistics have been found to be of value. The noble Viscount asked if the Government would say that all the provisions in the Highway Code shall be part of the law and carry penalties if infringed. There arc disadvantages about making the Highway Code part of the law. To begin with, it would need to be drafted in a form very different from its present form, and if it were redrafted in that form it would certainly not be suitable for general use. In the courts an infringement of the Code can be referred to as supporting evidence. On the first page of the old version there appears this passage: Failure on the part of any person to observe any provision of the Highway Code shall not of itself render that person liable to criminal proceedings; but any such failure may, in any proceedings, whether civil or criminal, be relied upon by any party to the proceedings as tending, to establish or to negative any liability which is in question in those proceedings. I agree that does not entirely meet the noble Viscount's point.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I am very much obliged to my noble friend.

That is just what I was afraid of; that means some courts will regard it and others will not. If you have it laid down as a principle—I am not dealing with the drafting point—that a person who breaks one of the provisions of the Highway Code is prima facie guilty of negligence if he is responsible for an accident it would be a different position.

LORD WINSTER

I appreciate the point but the fact remains that if that were to be done it would have to be drafted in a form which certainly would render it unsuitable for the purpose for which it is at present intended. I agree with the noble Viscount that the speed of vehicles is a very important factor but statistics do show—those horrible statistics—that that fact can easily be exaggerated as a cause of accidents. A universal speed limit would probably not be good because the public would not accept it as reasonable and enforcement of it would be almost impossible. What is wanted is a better standard of behaviour by road users, each being considerate of others. Propaganda in that direction should, I think, help very considerably.

The noble Viscount made a point of the necessity of stressing the importance of regulating speed according to circumstances. That will be referred to in the new Highway Code which is about to be issued. As regards footpaths, these are to be provided on all roads where the circumstances justify their provision. There are adequate powers to-day in the hands of the highway authorities. I endorse the views of those who say that pedestrians are too reluctant to use footpaths. In my native village they will walk anywhere rather than on the footpaths; I always find them in the road.

Then the noble Viscount raised a point which I think that your Lordships fed to be very important, and that is that anybody injured by a State-owned vehicle should be able to recover damages as in an ordinary case. The Minister of Wax Transport, as a matter of fact, is liable in tort by the provisions of the Minister of Transport Act; but the general point of the Crown being responsible raises a very big constitutional issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Elton, has had to leave, but he will be reading the Official Report, and I am bound to say that I rather deplore his speech; I thought that it was rather wild. He referred to himself as a crank. I would not venture to apply that epithet to him myself. He spoke about the question being solved if we had a Minister of War Transport who would risk his popularity. That is not the way to approach this subject, by suggesting that any question of popularity affects the mind of a Minister who is considering this very grave question. He asked whether there was any hope that any Minister in the present Government would take the matter seriously in hand. As of course we know, the Minister of War Transport has this matter most seriously at heart, as the steps which are being taken, and which have been indicated by my noble friend Lord Walkden, clearly demonstrate.

Lord Elton said that all that the Ministry could do was to issue some more leaflets. It is not right to dismiss what is being done by a phrase of that sort. The speech of my noble friend Lord Walkden showed that a great deal is being done in addition to propaganda; but, as I sense the debate this evening, I feel that your Lordships agree that this great propaganda campaign which is being embarked upon is a good idea, and deserves support and encouragement. There may be drawbacks, and I have noted some of the criticisms made; but in the main I feel that your Lordships agree that this is the right course for the Minister of War Transport to embark upon. Yet all that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, can do is to try to crab that campaign at the very outset. Having blamed the Minister for not doing this and that, when the Minister does something he tries to crab it. I think that that is an unfortunate thing to do in the present circumstances.

To reply to some of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, all Police Forces use plain clothes policemen in accident prevention work and the enforcement of speed limits, if that is considered the best way of getting results. 'He spoke of some very interesting devices—speed indicators and speed governors. Those have all been considered by the Road Safety Committee and rejected for technical reasons. This matter is going to be referred to in the final Report of that Committee. As for uniformity of penalty, that, of course, depends for the most part on what the courts of summary jurisdic- tion decide to do, and even the Home Office can only give guidance in that matter.

The noble Marquess, Lord Reading, told us that he had been a member of the Alness Committee. The Report of that Committee is a most important and admirable document, and everybody in the country is under a great debt of gratitude to the Committee for the work which they did. The noble Marquess hoped that that Report was receiving attention. From what I hear and have been told, I would say that the Report of the Alness Committee is a fixture on the Minister's desk, that the volume is always there and is constantly looked at by the Minister. The noble Marquess made a strong point about the Highway Code being divided into parts applicable to the motorist, the cyclist, and the pedestrian. There may be a man who has not a motor car but who is thinking of getting one. Does he qualify for the motorist's version of the Highway Code? After all, the same person is usually both cyclist and pedestrian, so that the division there would be rather difficult. As a matter of fact, the new Highway Code will be readily divisible into ' sections appropriate to particular classes of road user, and we hope that it will be so used. A plan for the future development of the roads of this country is being prepared, and the Trunk Roads Bill is now before a Standing Committee of the House of Commons. The preliminary planning for new road schemes is well in hand. The work will be carried out when resources permit, and the most modern systems of lay-out are all being considered.

We had a maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Morrison. I hope that he will allow me to congratulate him most warmly on that speech, which was full of common sense. Every word of it showed him to be a man of practical experience. We were all delighted, I am sure, that the horrible experiences which he went through on the occasion of his first maiden speech in the House of Commons have left no permanent scar on his sense of humour. I notice that he has dropped very quickly into your Lordships' habit of referring to six o'clock as "this late hour." I think that what he told us about the lay-out of the traffic area in Tottenham for training school children is most valuable and prac- tical. It was unfortunate that the war came to interrupt it. I am sure that it did good, and it showed great imagination. I think that many local authorities might well study what was done at Tottenham, and how far they could repeat the experiment in their own area. I can assure the noble Lord that the Ministry of War Transport, the Ministry of Education and the Home Office are all in constant contact on the problems of road accidents, and are represented on the Road Safety Committee.

My noble friend Lord Howe—although he sits oil the opposite side of the House, he must allow me as an old colleague to refer to him in that way—made a very spirited defence of the motorist. The motorists, of course, must have their case made for them. They have a case, and it was vigorously made by the noble Earl. He tended to put the blame rather heavily on the pedestrian, and in that respect he reminded me of the type of fox-hunter who says that fox-hunting would be an excellent sport but for the hounds. The noble Earl would find his motoring very much more enjoyable if it were not for these wretched pedestrians. I should like to make it clear, however, that I am animated by no animus whatever against the motorist. Far from it. It is not part of my view that the state of affairs with which we are dealing is entirely due to reckless driving by motorists, that they are the sole cause of the trouble. I entirely agree that other road users are responsible as well and that they should play their part in reducing the number of accidents.

The noble Lord quoted what was said in the Interim Report of the Committee on Road Safety—of which, I gather, he does not approve very much because there were no representatives of motorists on it. But I imagine that such representatives can be summoned and asked to give their counsel which, no doubt, would be valuable. He read a passage relating to blind corners which I think your Lordships felt was not very useful. The passage was as follows: We consider that each case should be considered on its merits and that accident frequency at a site, should be the determining factor except where the conditions are clearly such as to justify immediate remedial measures. The noble Lord did not go on to read what the paragraph says further on. It goes on to state: Moreover, the improvement of the line of vision on a bend may lead to higher speeds on roads not generally suitable for fast traffic, and conditions of even greater danger may result than existed prior to the improvement of the bend. We recommend that consideration should be given to the addition to the 'bend' sign of an indication of the speed at which a bend can safely be traversed. I am not arguing the question, if the noble Lord will allow me to say so, of whether the Committee are right or wrong on that point. I am just pointing out that they had reasons in their minds when they laid down a condition which I think the noble Lord suggested was in his view rather an indication of weak-mindedness on their part.

EARL HOWE

It seems to depend upon whether you look upon it as a bend or a corner.

LORD WINSTER

I do not think I will enter into a metaphysical discussion at this time of night as to when a bend is a corner and when a corner is a bend. I will ask to be excused, if I may.

May I say now that I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, will allow me to congratulate him on his speech? I am sorry to note that he has gone, but I am sure your Lordships would wish me to congratulate him upon a maiden speech of great sincerity which showed very practical experience on the matters of which he was talking. The noble Lord would like to see the figures for accidents on the roads published in the newspapers. I feel that that is a matter for the newspaper proprietors. I have no doubt that they will notice what the noble Lord has said and pay attention to it. The noble Viscount, Lord Long, paid a very well-deserved tribute to civilian lorry drivers, and I am sure that they will be glad to have, at long last, received this recognition.

Now as to pedestrians—I am dealing with one or two points which the noble Lord raised—pedestrians are told in the existing Highway Code to walk on the right where there are no footpaths.

LORD SANDHURST

Is that in the new edition?

LORD WINSTER

That advice will be repeated in the new document. Most of the State-aided schools are having safety training for children as a regular part of their curricula. We want to get the roads free from standing vehicles of Government Departments as soon as possible, and the noble Lord may be sure that my right honourable friend is active in that particular matter. As regards bridges—and this is an important point—a programme of strengthening weak bridges is being prepared and will be given high priority in work which is due to take place.

The noble Duke, the Duke of Richmond, referred to the Alness Committee's Report and to other matters relating to the roads. I think he will agree, when he reads the Report of to-day's debate, that I have, in the course of my speech, already answered questions which he put. Lord Waleran also had something to say about the pedestrian and his shortcomings. I thought he said it very fairly and very cogently indeed. As I say, it is no part of my case to say that the motorist is alone to blame. I completely agree with the noble Lord when he says that even ten miles an hour may be too fast in certain circumstances, and therefore I agree also with what the noble Viscount said about the necessity of the Highway Code drawing attention to the question of speed in relation to the circumstances. I have no doubt that my right honourable friend will note what the noble Lord has said as to statistics being misleading if they do not include all vehicles on the road. I am sure that that will be considered. Equally, I say to my noble friend Lord Sandhurst that I feel confident that my right honourable friend will note what he said about what goes on in these "L" cars when people are under instruction, and the possibility of the Special Constabulary being able to help the courtesy police in the execution of their duties.

My Lords, that I think answers the majority of the points which have been raised. I have really endeavoured to answer as fully as I can the questions asked. Perhaps I may be allowed to say one or two general words in conclusion. The Government are grateful to the most reverend Primate for raising the matter and for lending the authority and influence of his high position to this cause at a time when the great propaganda campaign is about to start. The Government regard no matter as more urgent than this of safety on the roads. All of us must be appalled and saddened by the figures given about children in particular. It was saddening also to hear my noble friend Lord Walkden tell us that the position is less favourable than it was before the war, especially when we reflect that more petrol and more cars are coming. Against this Army and other Government vehicles will be leaving the roads in increasing numbers. I am afraid we cannot deny that they have done great harm in their time, but unfortunately as they leave the roads they will be replaced by an equally lethal weapon; that is the errand boy driving the tradesman's van. But the roads will get better and we shall get more police. Those things in themselves should tend to bring about improvement.

As civilian lorry drivers have been mentioned, and as I have mentioned two other classes of drivers, I think I ought to mention that we all feel great admiration for the bus drivers in London. In all conditions of weather they do get on with their job week after week with amazing efficiency.

LORD SANDHURST

That is the result of education; they go through a very careful schooling.

LORD WINSTER

That is true. Local authorities can be most helpful in this matter of road safety. The experiment at Salford and what the Chief Constable did there has already been mentioned. It was remarkable work. I feel sure that from now on local authorities will regard it as a matter of civic pride to be able to say they have brought the accident rate down in the areas under control. If I may express a personal hope, it is that all headmasters and headmistresses will take the supervision of the safety instruction in their schools into their hands as a matter which they regard as a direct charge upon their responsibility. If they do that excellent results may be looked for. In addition, most valuable work can be done by women's organizations and youth associations. They can give very great help.

But it will be when we can get clown to road work that we can make a real start on one of the true remedial measures in this matter. It has been said that segregation is valuable. I agree, but when you are providing means of segregation can you persuade all those concerned to segregate? The case of the pedestrian who will not use the footpath has been mentioned more than once. In my own observation cyclists have an absolutely ineradicable objection to using tracks especially set apart for their use. The youthful cyclist likes to display his skill in the fast-moving traffic. He may make our hair stand on end, but to him it is a sport. I was very much struck by what my noble friend Lord Walkden said about the comparison between the railways and the roads. I have often noticed the railways running for miles and miles through deserted country, on tracks fenced off, and then seeing our busy towns with their teeming populations, narrow streets which are still the only playgrounds for so many children, and fast motor traffic hurtling along.

The second thing which always strikes me in this matter, is the number of bad drivers on the roads. I hardly go out without seeing at least one example of thoroughly bad driving and there is no doubt that the good fast driver is not the greatest menace. The slow bad driver can he far more dangerous. In fact, we all know that acceleration and a quick reaction time has over and over again saved an accident. Nevertheless, people do drive too fast and in that connexion I think the mobile police forces did good. Where negligence has contributed to an accident I think the penalties should be severe and that some effort should be made to get them into some sort of standardization. I think the Highway Code is excellent. I wish I could think that every driver really does study it. Every one in charge of a ship has to know his "rule of the road," but I very much doubt if the same can be said of every car driver.

The fact is that it comes down to this: our way of life is dependent on roads and those roads are being increasingly used by a volume of traffic which was never foreseen and for which they were never designed. The trouble is inherent in that fact. We are going through a process of adapting the old roads to the new traffic. That process can, perhaps, be pushed too far. I think that radically new ideas as regards roads are required as well as this process of adapting roads to the traffic. With a falling birth-rate we cannot tolerate the calamitous loss of young lives.

Everything said by Lord Walkden and, I hope, by myself, clearly indicates that the Government and the Ministry of War Transport, who in this matter are the Government agents, recognize their responsibility in regard to a grave problem and are not only vigilant in investigation of anything likely to mitigate the evil, but have begun, and are taking, positive action. I can assure the most reverend Primate who moved the Motion and others who have spoken in this debate that we do realize the gravity of the matter and, as the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, said, we do intend to put our backs into it. What has been said in this debate will receive scrupulous attention from the Government. I hope it will receive special attention from the Press and B.B.C. I trust, too, that what has been said may arouse all to a sense of responsibility and even prick the conscience of those who through their thoughtlessness or selfishness take chances or do something in such a fashion to run the risk of bringing one of these dreadful tragedies into a home.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, the most reverend Primate who introduced this Motion has asked me to do three things on his behalf. The first was to thank the noble Lord for his answer, the second to apologize for having to leave the House before the debate was over, and the third to ask permission to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.