'The Voyage Perilous': driving in 1950s London

Londoners drive abreast, packed nose to tail and side to side, and they have gradually evolved a complicated code of their own, as different from the Highway Code as contract bridge conventions are from the simple rules of auction.

- KRIS CULMER

The selection of traffic lane, the right of way, all seems to be governed by bids, leads and responses. It is only by this queer but on the whole practical code that London traffic avoids bogging down completely in one solid mass.”

This was the situation as Autocar found it in 1952, and not dissimilar to that which we find today in the capital. What is notably different, however, is that whereas London traffic is today strictly controlled, under constant surveillance and threat of fines and punishment, in the 1950s the authorities “tolerated and even approved unofficially” of the mass bending of certain rules.

Back then, lanes were rarely demarcated and vehicles were all far narrower, such that a bus, a truck and a car might breathe three-wide on a road where today two cars would feel squeezed. Traffic lights were quite rare. And flashing indicators weren’t yet in use: instead drivers would drop ‘trafficator’ arms, if fitted, or else perform hand signals.

Autocar explained: “The left lane will be used by very slow vehicles, anything that will be stopping shortly and, above all, anything that is planning to turn off to the left. The outside lane traffic includes those who wish to turn off to the right in due course.