Civilise the car!

“The car’s high speed, particularly relative to walking, creates an aggressiveness that must be constrained. Certainly it has not been possible to rely on the self-restraint of the individual motorist, whose motoring decision-making is usually singularly self-centred.

“For a while it was thought that simply providing more and more street space was the solution. But this has rarely proved effective, and one of the major advances in recent times has been the use of a restricted street system to forcibly civilize the car.”

Strong stuff. Must have been written by a Bolshevik bicyclist? A sandal-chewing, lentil-wearing hippy? An Autogeddonist? A car-hating loon?

Nope.

It’s from a book by Maxwell Gordon Lay, author of Handbook of Road Technology and Ways of the World: A History of the World’s Roads and the vehicles that used them.

His car credentials include being Executive Director of the Australian Road Research Board and he was Chairman of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria.