Wednesday 19th June 2002

Files released from the Public Record Office revealed some of the more unusual road safety suggestions made to civil servants by the general public. Among them was the vision of a road-safety system from a Mr Beck of South Shields in County Durham, which would have involved installing a set of giant electromagnets under the road. He suggested that any car trying to drive over his pedestrian crossing while people were on it would be brought to a grinding halt by the powerful magnets, and said that steel skids would need to be attached to vehicles so that they could be stopped by the magnetic ‘ground-tables’.