The History Of The Highway Code
The Highway Code is widely known by many as the set of laws and guidelines that govern the way we all use the roads, whether you are a pedestrian, a driver, a cyclist, a horse rider, or any other kind of road-user.
Around a decade the motorcar was born, there were two million of them on the roads and in 1930 there were around 7300 deaths by road accidents. Considering that in 2006 there were around 3000 deaths by road accidents and over 20 million cars on the road, the 1930 statistics needed sorting out.
The government of the day knew that they needed to do something about this, thus the Highway Code was born. Now nearly 80 years old, it has had a lot of changes made to it over the years considering that the original version of the Code contained information about things like what actions to take when driving your carriage and horses, and was only 24 pages long!
The original version of the Code was very limited, but then so were the laws of the road in comparison to today so I suppose that is to be expected. There were no road signs when the Code first came out, and nobody had thought twice about driving after drinking, or when tired, so you can see, the Code still had a long way to go. Even among the 15 road signs that were included in the second edition (1946), there are only two that we use today.
The 1946 version was the first to include many things, such as the very early days of measuring braking distances which were displayed in the form of a dull chart. They didn’t use images to to portray braking distances until the 1954 version. Also in the 1954 version, there were 16 new roadsigns, putting the total number up to 31, which really isn’t a lot when compared to today’s 170.
The sixth edition was out in 1968 which included 3D images and photographs to show stopping distance. The 1978 version contained these as well. It also contained the Green Cross Code for pedestrians and orange badges for disabled people. Due to a huge increase in car crime, the government made an update on this version to so that it contained advice on how to keep your car secure.
The version of the 90s contained advice and information about the theory driving test that had just been introduced. The information that new drivers are required to learn in order to pass their theory test has now become part of the Code itself.
The Highway Code has been adapted over the 78 years that it has been with us to become the comprehensive book on road advice, guidelines and law. One of the newest of which being the fact that you cannot use mobile phones while driving, and considering mobile phones weren’t invented when the Code was originally brought out, it just shows how the laws of the road have adapted and changed with society.
