The advent of the automobile exerted revolutionary change on British society in the twentieth century, and this book examines this in relation to Britain’s roads between 1900 and 1970. There are two central debates that drive this book. The first is concerned with the declining democracy of the road in the face of ‘the new form of express train’, the automobile. The second debate, and the central focus of this book, is the role of the police in controlling the road. This book suggests that the democracy of the road was bound to decline, as the motor car drove the pedestrian, and other road users, off the road – for motorised vehicles were indomitable and unforgiving killing machines and this implied necessary segregation. As for the precise role of the police in this process, and the extent to which they were complicit in the rise of the motorists, this book suggests that they sought to act in an impartial manner in enforcing the law, although they were not always helped by the magistracy and the courts, and that they were not the partial servants of the motorists. They adopted a three-part strategy: the three Es of Enforcement, Engineering and Education. In the first of these, their essential sphere of influence, the police acted as arbitrators of the road and sought to enforce the law of the land, despite the opposition of motoring lobbies and the failures of the courts. They thus performed in the style of Gatrell’s concept of the ‘policeman state’ – the notion that the police have always sought to apply the law impartially. In the case of the Engineering and Education, their influence was much more marginal, for they were dependent on local authorities and planning authorities for the first of these, and influenced greatly by voluntary organisations such as the National ‘Safety First’ Association (NSFA)/Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) with regard to the second. Indeed, in Education, their work was very much focused on dealing with the pedestrian and the child. In the end, though, police sought to be even-handed, with Enforcement largely composed of the rules of the road applied to motorists, and Engineering and Education more geared towards saving the lives of pedestrians. The strategy worked and the road holocaust was finally defeated. However, this was achieved through the necessary restructuring of British policing and the segregation of the pedestrian.