The blog

The Human Hen

by carltonreid / on December 06, 2014 /

“If a fast motor-car sees a man, woman, or child, a nursemaid with a perambulator, a dog, or a hen in its path, it makes a loud, rude, and alarming noise to tell the man, woman, child, nursemaid, dog, or […]

Judge: “The motor-car should in law be regarded as a wild beast”

by carltonreid / on December 05, 2014 /

“A far higher standard of care should be demanded of the motorist by reason of his having brought upon the public roads a lethal instrument of great mobility and power,” a famous judge didn’t say in the 1920s. Didn’t say because […]

Walking is Exhilarating

by carltonreid / on October 14, 2014 /

This 1922 poster says “Walking is Exhilarating” but what it’s really trying to convey – probably unsuccessfully – is that “Walking is Better Than Sex.” The poster was one of 48 produced jointly by the American Social Hygiene Association, the […]

#space4cycling 1928

by carltonreid / on February 14, 2014 /

Over on BikeHub.co.uk I have released the news that the Bicycle Association is to support the national roll-out of London Cycling Campaign’s #space4cycling. This isn’t the first time the industry association has made such calls. Back in the 1928 a […]

The Dutch bike isn’t Dutch it’s English (and proudly not updated since 1911)

by carltonreid / on August 19, 2013 /

The Dutch bike – the omafiets, or grandmother bike – seems to be as Dutch as tulips and clogs. Just as tulips and clogs are not Dutch (tulips were first commercially grown in Persia and wooden shoes are global) the […]

Which road users cause congestion? (Clue: it’s not cyclists, not in 1919 and not now)

by carltonreid / on July 19, 2013 /

From Modern Roads, of 1919, by Henry Percy Boulnois, city surveyor of Exeter and Liverpool, and later a member of the Government’s Road Board in 1909. In the 1920s, Boulnois was chairman of the council of the Roads Improvement Association. […]

"How cyclists were the first to push for good roads & became the pioneers of motoring." ROADS WERE NOT BUILT FOR CARS is a print, Kindle, iPad and free e-book about roads history.

The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. They were also the first promoters of motoring; the first motoring journalists had first been cycling journalists; and there was a transfer of technology from cycling to motoring without which cars as we know them wouldn't exist! Nearly seventy car marques – including Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC – had bicycling beginnings.

'Roads Were Not Built for Cars' is a history book, focussing on a time when cyclists had political clout, in Britain and especially in America. The book researches the Roads Improvement Association - a lobbying group created by the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1886 - and the Good Roads movement organised by the League of American Wheelmen in the same period.

The book was published in a Kickstarter limited-edition in September 2014. Island Press of Washington, D.C. published a revised second-edition in April 2015.

Thanks to research grants and advertising support, text-only PDF chapters from the book are slowly being made available for free to read online. The free distribution model is being used in order to get the book seen by as many eyes as possible. The paid-for publications are richly illustrated; the free versions have had the pix stripped out and replaced with adverts.

To get notification of the paid-for and free publications subscribe to the (infrequent) email newsletter. See below or in the sidebars.

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MOTORISTS' FRONT OF JUDEA: Apart from the pneumatic tyre, ball bearings, differential gears, roads, motoring, car ads, and aviation, what have the cyclists ever done for us?

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