Catholic Medical Quarterly Volume 75(3) August 2025
Correspondence
Motorisation & Christians
Antony Porter
“Is there a Christian attitude towards the internal combustion engine and the way of life that it makes possible?” This question is often asked but rarely gets much of a response, perhaps because so often we get distracted and end up talking about our own personal use of cars.
Yet we are all aware of the negative themes concerning motorisation such as the ruthlessness of motorway planning, the horrid deaths of animals, the widening gap between rich and poor and the manipulation of road death statistics to make our highways seem safer than they are.
Motorisation remains the largest area of modern life to be ignored by the Christian Churches, with people’s road deaths and injuries considered less important than their genders and sexualities. No wonder that to me, a non-driver, the whole culture of motorisation seems so adolescent and immature, despite its many benefits.
The Pedestrians Association, now known as Living Streets, was founded in 1929 by Tom Foley, a London journalist who had become concerned about road deaths and injuries at a time when motorised vehicles were considered the best thing since sliced bread! Several other road safety groups now exist such as Brake and Roadpeace.
Nevertheless in 1933 and again in 1955 the Pedestrians Association had organised conferences in London to which senior religious were invited, although sadly after that these connections seem to have ended. Both conferences were entitled “The Churches and Road Safety”.
The 1933 conference was attended by various notables such as Miss Rose Macaulay, Viscount Cecil, Lord Riddell and the Master of Balliol.
Meanwhile, striking messages of support were received from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Carlisle and the Master of Balliol.
There were also representatives of several interesting groups such as the Anti-Noise League, the Federation of Rambling Clubs, the National Horse Association and the Road Walking Association. Some claimed that “the underlying cause of accidents was speed” and that this was leading to “spiritual and moral loss”.
The 1955 conference featured contributions from the Archbishops of Westminster and York, another Bishop of Carlisle, Canons from Westminster Abbey and Cathedral and the Chief Rabbi. There was talk of “Road Safety Sundays” as well as the need for elderly people to pray and ask for help before crossing roads.
It is indeed an irony that all these years later things have scarcely changed! Notably, drunk driving was scarcely mentioned and of course it is now doubly worse with the growth of drugged driving. More recent problems include “ramming” whereby an individual, usually a young man, drives into a crowd and kills many people.
The two conferences evidently marked the last time that British clergy specifically focused upon the tragedies of our highways. In 2023 there were 1,624 deaths on Britain’s roads, some 31 per week, yet these figures refer only those who died within one month of their accident.