Toot, toot

Blipper gillyh and I exchanged concern about the number of road accidents we had seen - on motorways and rural roads respectively. Google any motoring organisation and find warnings about the spike in accidents over the festive season. It's not hard to determine the causes: traffic volume, weather, unfamiliar journeys, tiredness, alcohol and other drugs, rowdy passengers

Driving has become a culture war issue: low-traffic neighbourhoods, 15-minute cities, low-emission zones, 20mph limits. There is manipulated, sometimes malicious, resistance to any measure that can be interpreted as limiting the 'freedom' of the motorist, with an attempt to shoehorn this into a narrative of 'ordinary people' being 'oppressed' by a 'liberal elite'

I found an article about the introduction of the motor car in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was fiercely resisted by 'ordinary people' - not least because, at that stage, it really was restricted to the rich elite who could actually afford them. Even then, people described the change in character of someone when they sat behind a steering wheel, and there are descriptions of what we would now call 'road rage'.

The resistance against cars seems to have been far from passive, notwithstanding the difference in wealth and class. Rocks were hurled; so was dung; roads were blocked with rope or chain, or ploughed to make them impassible by car; guns were carried; whips were brandished. Drivers acquired a reputation for being overbearing, inconsiderate and lawless

All of this was the context within which Kenneth Grahame created The Wind in thd Willows, including its archetypal upper-class bully and motoring reprobate. I wonder if part of its success was its resonance with the mood of the day about cars

We spent a morning in the orchard, gapping-up where some tree-planting from previous years had failed, or muntjack - as reprobate as the denizen of Toad Hall, in my eyes - had defeated our defences. MrsM's sharp eyes saw this sleepy head, half buried in the planting hole, just in time to stop me slicing through him with a spade. I took him to the hedge, where there is plenty of cover to hide under. He caused us no distress whatsoever

More about the possible inspiration for Mr Toad here