M-l for Murder

Of some 40 British-made cars, all but half a dozen are technically capable of speeds over 75 m.p.h. But while British owners bandy maximum speeds, r.p.m.s and acceleration rates as expertly as if auto racing were the nation's favorite blood sport, they seldom, if ever, get to test these heady technicalities. On an antique road network, pocked by decades of neglect and choked by 8,500,000 cars and trucks passing relentlessly through one narrow village after another, most drivers consider themselves Barney Oldfields if they can occasionally push speedometers over 30 m.p.h., and they get their thrills by passing on curves or parking on them.

It was enough to challenge the prowess of every red-blooded driver from Bognor Regis to Balquhidder when the initial 72-mile stretch of Britain's first six-lane throughway opened last week after 590 days abuilding. M1, as the government proudly labeled the London-Birmingham Motorway, is intended--when its final 45 miles are completed--to almost halve the time it now takes to crawl along a major industrial artery (average speed: 23.4 m.p.h.). But it boasts one feature guaranteed to lure speed-starved drivers from all parts of Britain. It has no speed limit.

"I Was Frightened." Last week, after new Transport Minister Ernest Marples had hailed M1's first $59 million link as "a powerful weapon," the highway took on the appearance of a battleground. Said Marples, hurrying back to the safety of London: "I was frightened." Though the throughway is soundly engineered-for high speeds, it soon became plain that British drivers are not.

At the rate of 2,000 an hour, motorists rolled onto the motorway on its first day, and went weaving and swerving across the unfamiliar lanes in a spine-chilling display of what police later called "bad traffic-lane discipline." Fast drivers jockeyed at speeds that reached 120 m.p.h. Slowpoke trucks and antique autos clung stolidly to lanes reserved for fast traffic. Scores of cars, not up to the pace or to the handling they got, gasped to a halt--as often as not on the pavement--with burst tires, smoking engines or empty fuel tanks. In the first five hours there were more than 100 breakdowns. The motor of one car dropped out. Emergency telephones, which had been strung forehandedly at one-mile intervals along the road, were kept busy every three minutes.

"Think Big." Motorway madness became the big story of the week. "Drive M-1 for Murder," quipped sardonic Londoners. TV and radio announcers urgently warned drivers against parking on the pavement--or off it either, "until the earth settles."

By midweek, motorists had slowed to average speeds of 50-60 m.p.h., while many trucks that had flocked to M-1 returned to safer, slower routes. Then, one fog-shrouded morning on the motorway's northern reaches, a chain reaction took place. A disabled truck pulled to the side of the road, and a car stopped behind it; a police "breakdown van" pulled in to help. A truck piled into the breakdown van and the truck driver was killed. Another truck piled into the wreckage and its driver too was killed.

In its first unhappy week, M-1 not only pointed up the flashy ineptitude of Britain's average driver, but dramatized how far Britain must go in putting its highway system into shape. Lord Chesham warned in the House of Lords: "We must think hard, think big and think fast."

*Unlike Britain's first daring foray into the present, the eight-mile Preston Bypass (TIME, May 18), which had to be rebuilt after seven weeks in service.

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