ABSTRACT
We should not forget that personal mobility through motorised transport has a relatively short history, albeit a history of rapid evolution. The horse and carriage and the bicycle began to give way to the motorcycle and the motorcar barely 100 years ago. The initial response was an immediate focus on infrastructure provision; more and better roads were needed. As motorised traffic volumes increased, an additional focus was needed on traffic management, including legislation and regulation. For example, the world’s first traffic light was only switched on in 1914 (in Cleveland, Ohio),25 while the first traffic act in France appeared in 1921 and the first in China not until 1955.97
Education about road rules and safe driving quickly became the principal tool within governments’ crash prevention strategies based upon the (now quaint) belief that if drivers understood what was good, safe practice, they would always apply it! It was the birth of the moral approach, which has proven remarkably, and tragically, resilient. As Jennifer Clark wrote:
While enforcement was a supplementary strategy, it was with a “soft glove” because the police saw traffic enforcement as secondary to the enforcement of “real crime.”99 The fledgling profession of traffic engineering had no choice but to become the interpreters of human behaviour in traffic, sadly without any training in behavioural science. Traffic engineers were undoubtedly happy to be supported by road safety councils comprising eminent and concerned citizens who led the (largely) educational efforts.
