By 1910, the motor car was plainly conquering the highway. The private car was now part of every rich man’s establishment, although its price made it as yet an impossible luxury for most of the middle class. But for the adventuresome youth, there was the motorcycle, a fearsome invention producing accidents and ear-splitting noises. Already the dignified carriages and smart pony-traps were beginning to disappear from the roads and coachmen and grooms unless mechanically minded, were finding it more difficult to make a living.

The roads which had gone to sleep since the coming of the railway now awoke to feverish activity. Cars and motorcycles dashed along them at speeds which rivalled those of the express trains and the lorry began to appear. Therefore, the road system was compelled to adapt itself to the volume and speed of traffic for which it had never intended. Its complete adaptation was impossible, but the road surface was easily transformed and during the early years of the century, the dustiness and greasiness of the highways were lessened by tar-spraying. To widen and straighten the roads and get rid of blind corners and every steep gradient were tasks which had scarcely been tackled before 1914. The situation was worst of all in towns where not only was any large scheme of road widening usually out of the question but also where crowding and danger were all too frequently increased by the short-sighted eagerness of town authorities in laying down tramlines.

Yet, it was not only the road system that was in need of readjustment; the nervous system of those who used and dwelt by the road suffered. The noises caused by the conversion of the roads into speedways called for a corresponding tightening up of the nerves and especially in the towns, the pedestrian who wished to preserve life and limb was compelled to keep his attention continually on the stretch; to practise himself in estimates of the speed of approaching vehicles and to run or jump for his life if he ventured off the pavement.

It is possible to have a glimpse of life after death. Man has always believed in an afterlife but only today do we have scientific reports of people who seem to have experienced the sensation of dying but lived to tell about it. On-going research is documenting hundreds of cases each year of the near-death experience (NDE), and scientists think they are finding a clearly identifiable pattern: usually a man is dying and as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.

After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a ‘body’, but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon after, things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warming spirit of a kind he has never encountered before - a being of light - appears before him. This being asks him a question, non-verbally - to make him evaluate his life - and helps him along by showing him a panoramic instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. Then he finds that he must go back to earth that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love and peace. Despite his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.