PRIMEVAL SLIME
Page 68
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COMMENTARY by JANUS
SUPPORT from motorists for a campaign against lorry drivers is, for the most part, irrational. It is not based on arguments that could stand up to a logical analysis. Unfortunately, this increases rather than simplifies the difficulty of silencing the attacks. Careful and sensible answers must continue to be made whenever the need arises, but it is likely that something more will have to be done before the campaign can be brought to a halt.
The complaining motorist is not entirely witless. Like Hamlet, he is but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, he knows a hawk from a handsaw. It is hard to suppose he does not understand that the carriage of outsize loads by rail is physically impossible; that a good deal of other traffic is transported much more conveniently by road; that the transfer of a proportion of it to other forms of transport would do little to ease road congestion; that the worst conditions are often to be found at times, such as summer week-ends, when there is little goods traffic moving; that, if he practised what he preached, he would travel by rail himself; and so on.
THESE facts may be in the mind of the motorist, but he does not allow them to influence him. He is both dissatisfied and disquieted because of the present road situation, and, as is natural, he looks for somebody to blame. The roads are inanimate, and therefore not satisfactory as scapegoats. The Government, the Ministry of Transport, and even the Minister, are too remote. There is no need to go as far afield as this when a much better
target is near at hand. • The discoveries of the psychologists, as well as the lessons of recent history, have made us too painfully aware of the ease with which people can be carried away along this line of thought or emotion. The recent article in a popular Sunday newspaper, and the repercussions that followed it. have rightly caused alarm because they illustrate so well the way in which the so-called subconscious, or irrational, portion of the mind is said to function.
As in a dream, it prefers to make use of images or symbols rather than ideas. The author of the article is ready to oblige. He conjures up his image, appropriately enough, from the primeval slime, and describes the lorry as a modern equivalent of the prehistoric dinosaur. The choice of symbol is excellent, for it can be made to perform several different tasks. For one thing, few of us find the Jurassic Age anything but distasteful, and, however great our love of animals, we generally make an exception of the very small, such as the flea, and the disproportionate monsters of the kind that flourished millions of years before man appeared on the earth.
We begin, therefore, with a prejudice against the poor dinosaur, and this is then fostered in two almost opposite ways. The theme of the article is that the commercial vehicle is slow and cumbersome, and reduces following traffic to little more than a crawl. However, the cartoonist called in to show what the dinosaur looks like has preferred to draw a ravening monster with staring eyes and a cruel row of teeth, roaring along a narrow road at such speed that everything in its path is thrown on one side, and the crates and parcels that make up the load are scattered in every direction.
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The contradiction passes unnoticed among those readers who merely wish to have their own prejudices confirmed. The article, as far as one knows, was widely read and highly appreciated, There were also several protests, from bodies such as the Road Haulage Association as well as from individuals. The editor did not see fit to print any of the comments. He must, of course, be the final arbiter, and there are many good reasons why not every contribution to a newspaper can be published. All the same, one cannot avoid noting that the refusal to put forward the opposite side of a case is symptomatic of the state of mind I have described.
BY no means all car drivers are affected. With the number of cars in use already at 61m., it is becoming increasingly true to say that we are all motorists. The majority, probably the great majority, take the sensible view, and certainly would not argue that, because they are multiplying far more rapidly than the mileage of available road, other users should be restricted or suppressed. There remains a minority large enough to make it worth while to take notice of their enmity.
Why should they support an attack that is both unfair and irrational? If the answer could be found to this question it might help in determining the best way to deal with the attack. There may not be one clear, reason. Writers who wish to be rude to motorists as a class will sometimes speak of a widespread neurosis; compounded of many factors, such as the emergence of the car as a status symbol, the false sense of mastery it gives to drivers who in most of their other activities find themselves oppressed. or bullied, the frustration caused by congestion, the frequent quick decisions that even the most careful of drivers• must make in the knowledge that the wrong decision might mean an 'accident; and the feeling of guilt at the appalling death toll.
THE last point is certainly important. The feeling can so easily be suppressed or not recognized. The promoters of the recent road safety campaign may not have been altogether wise in building it round the slogan "Road accidents can be caused by people like you! ". The point is one which the motorist knows too well, but about which he does not wish to be reminded. For this reason, there is a risk that he may have developed an unavowed resistance to the campaign.
It is far more comforting to believe that road accidents are caused by somebody else—the lorry driver, for example. There are plenty of statistics at hand from the Ministry ot: Transport to show that, in fact, lorries—taking the term to cover goods vehicles weighing more than 3 tons— ace involved in less than 4 per cent, of all road accidents. Evidence of this kind is set -aside, or replaced by. the. supposition that goods vehicles cause delays, that these delays make the motorist frustrated, and that in this frame of mind he is higly accident-prone.
It is astonishing that this extremely mischievous argument should be seriously put .forward, and it certainly provides a measure of the scope of the campaign needed to rehabilitate the lorry driver. Some suggestions will have to be left to a further article.