Truly the motor is everywhere, but on the crowded roads of the metropolis its presence and speed have raised a problem for which the multitudinous highway authorities seek in vain a solution.
To such a pass have things come that the attitude of the average motorist is practically that the roads are his property, and that all others are trespassers, to be hooted off.
. . . the sinister result of modern traffic conditions has a deeper meaning than is realised or expressed by commentators in the Press. It signifies the growing pace and intensity of industrial fife, the universal acceleration of production, and the decreasing value of the life of the worker when put in the balance against the pleasure or profit of the class that owns the country. The huge and increasing size of industrial centres, and the greater distances between the workers' homes and the factory, the need for more quickly transferring labour, the greed of the rack renter of the central districts, the knowledge that the workers' time is money to the capitalists, the rush for profits of a transport trust, and the all-pervading atmosphere of hustle, recklessness. and speed is engendered by capitalist greed and the ever-increasing world-wide competition—all these are symptoms of the deep-lying social malady.
But so long as class ownership remains, for just so long will the long list of killed and maimed continue fail grow, and all remedial measures fail to keep pace with the break-neck speeding up of our daily tasks.
From the Socialist Standard,
January 1913.
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