Even in my childhood we never went out on Bank Holidays – or not very far. As my father used to say: Why spend the holiday stuck in a traffic jam?
The number of cars on the road rose dramatically during the 1950s from under 2 million at the start of the decade to almost 5 million by 1960; even so, that seems nothing at all compared with the 27 million on the roads today. But the first stretch of the M1 was opened only in November 1959; for holiday travel to the seaside or inland attractions only old-fangled roads were available to drivers.
It wasn’t just the cars but the nervous drivers who contributed to the jams, especially the dreaded Sunday Drivers. These people owned a car, but drove it only rarely. Many of them were elderly ladies. I had two maiden aunts in that category, & my French teacher at school was the owner of a splendid cream Armstrong Siddeley with a navy blue soft top & brass fittings, which made barely more than one outing a year.
So Bank Holidays on the road came to be seen as especially dangerous. It became normal for the BBC to lead the evening television news with the count of the number of people who had died (so far) on what should have been a happy day. It was only in the 1970s that the tradition was stamped on, as road safety experts pointed out that in fact Bank Holiday deaths were not unusually high, & that a false sense of security about the safety of the roads at other times meant that drivers were failing to pay due care & attention.
But I still don’t understand why some people willingly submit themselves to the misery of a Bank Holiday on crowded roads – there are always alternatives. The herd instinct is astonishingly strong – it used to be particularly noticeable in London parks; walk into say, Hyde Park on a sunny day through one of the gates on the Bayswater road & the number of bodies on the grass would rival Blackpool beach; walk just a short distance into the centre of the park & you could be in one of the most remote parts of the countryside.
Nowt so queer as folk
The number of cars on the road rose dramatically during the 1950s from under 2 million at the start of the decade to almost 5 million by 1960; even so, that seems nothing at all compared with the 27 million on the roads today. But the first stretch of the M1 was opened only in November 1959; for holiday travel to the seaside or inland attractions only old-fangled roads were available to drivers.
It wasn’t just the cars but the nervous drivers who contributed to the jams, especially the dreaded Sunday Drivers. These people owned a car, but drove it only rarely. Many of them were elderly ladies. I had two maiden aunts in that category, & my French teacher at school was the owner of a splendid cream Armstrong Siddeley with a navy blue soft top & brass fittings, which made barely more than one outing a year.
So Bank Holidays on the road came to be seen as especially dangerous. It became normal for the BBC to lead the evening television news with the count of the number of people who had died (so far) on what should have been a happy day. It was only in the 1970s that the tradition was stamped on, as road safety experts pointed out that in fact Bank Holiday deaths were not unusually high, & that a false sense of security about the safety of the roads at other times meant that drivers were failing to pay due care & attention.
But I still don’t understand why some people willingly submit themselves to the misery of a Bank Holiday on crowded roads – there are always alternatives. The herd instinct is astonishingly strong – it used to be particularly noticeable in London parks; walk into say, Hyde Park on a sunny day through one of the gates on the Bayswater road & the number of bodies on the grass would rival Blackpool beach; walk just a short distance into the centre of the park & you could be in one of the most remote parts of the countryside.
Nowt so queer as folk
