From Toad of Toad Hall to the ‘Death Drivers’ of Belfast

Abstract

Joyriding has a largely uncharted history and it will be demonstrated here that popular and academic understandings of the term have often been far from clear-cut. The theft of motor vehicles for temporary use was first identified as a matter for UK legislation in 1930, when it was made an offence to take and drive away a vehicle without the owner’s consent (hereafter TDA). As shown below, the nature of TDA was incompletely recorded and understood for much of the twentieth century. TDA statistics capture a number of criminal practices. These include the short-term use of cars for use in other offences (where the stolen car, but not the other crimes, are detected) and the instrumental use of stolen cars, to travel from A to B. However, it is with the expressive use of vehicles, in activities that are labelled as joyriding, with which TDA has been most commonly linked. This is certainly the case with respect to media representations of TDA. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was strong interest in the most visible forms of TDA, associated with high-speed police chases and other forms of dangerous driving indulged in by young males.