Sketches from The Lancet

Abstract

The high incidence of death and injury from road-traffic accidents is now taken for granted, and becomes a matter for public debate only when especially serious or horrifying incidents occur. However, the dangers of the motor car featured regularly in The Lancet early this century, as car ownership began to spread (panel 1). “The number of street accidents is rising day by day, and the pedestrian in a crowded city has to keep a sharp look-out in order to cross the streets in safety … The time has arrived, we think, when close consideration should be given to the fact that there is now running in our streets a fast and dangerous traffic for which these streets were never constructed” (July 20, 1912, p 166). “The number of street accidents is rising day by day, and the pedestrian in a crowded city has to keep a sharp look-out in order to cross the streets in safety … The time has arrived, we think, when close consideration should be given to the fact that there is now running in our streets a fast and dangerous traffic for which these streets were never constructed” (July 20, 1912, p 166).