In 1940 a game called Black-Out was produced about the pitfalls and perils of driving around London during the blackout. Described on the box as a ‘Skilful card game – full of interest’, it featured a playing board of central London in the blackout and could be played by two, three or four players (the back of the board was appropriately completely black with the name of the game and a silhouette of the city of London). A roll and move game, each player could choose a different token and drive around the capital in either a taxi, lorry, van or ‘saloon car’. In line with wartime restrictions the game was made of cheap materials, the playing pieces being constructed of cardboard mounted on a small wooden base. Each player started from a different corner of London – Marble Arch, Holborn, Hyde Park Corner or Charing Cross – and finished in the opposite diagonal corner. To start, each player was dealt three cards from a special pack. The cards featured wartime obstructions and personnel likely to be encountered while driving across the capital in the dark including the following:
Fire Alarm
Road ‘Refuge’
Policeman
War Auxiliary Policeman
Auxiliary Fire Squad
Air Raid Warden
Fireman
Sandbags
Sand Buckets
Red, Amber and Green Crossings
Each card was represented by a symbol on the board, players requiring two out of three cards to progress along the road. Interestingly, the rules stated, ‘Although you may select any roads you like to reach your destination, you mustn’t pass another vehicle coming in the opposite direction. If another vehicle is approaching, you must not enter a road unless there is a side turning which either you or your opponent can use. You may, however, overtake a vehicle going in the same direction.’ The player who reached their destination first without passing another vehicle or crashing was deemed the winner.
The reality of driving during the blackout was very different from the game. In September 1939 it was announced that only car sidelights would be allowed with alarming results. Car accidents increased exponentially, and the number of people killed on the roads almost doubled. The King’s surgeon, Wilfred Trotter, wrote in the British Medical Journal that by ‘frightening the nation into blackout regulations, the Luftwaffe was able to kill 600 British citizens a month without ever taking to the air, at a cost to itself of exactly nothing.’
One driver, Harold Nicolson, wrote about the effect of the blackout in his diary:
Motor up … to London. There are few signs of any undue activity beyond a few khaki figures at Staplehurst and some schoolboys filling sandbags at Maidstone. When we get near London, we see a row of balloons hanging like black spots in the air. Go down to the House of Commons at 5.30. They have already darkened the building and lowered the lights … I dine at the Beefsteak [Club] … When I leave the Club, I am startled to find a perfectly black city. Nothing could be more dramatic or give one more of a shock than to leave the familiar Beefsteak and to find outside not the glitter of all the sky-signs, but a pall of black velvet.45
The media were quick to pick up on the increased fatalities on the roads. The Daily Telegraph reported in October 1939: ‘Road deaths in Great Britain have more than doubled since the introduction of the black-out, it was revealed by the Ministry of Transport accident figures for September, issued yesterday. Last month 1,130 people were killed, compared with 617 in August and 554 in September last year. Of these, 633 were pedestrians.’ In response the Transport Minister, Euan Wallace, ‘made an earnest appeal to all motor-drivers to recognise the need for a general and substantial reduction of speed in blackout conditions’.46
A game called Black-Out was produced so children could learn about the pitfalls and perils of driving around London in the dark.
Each player started from a different corner of London and was dealt three cards from a special pack, the cards dealing with wartime restrictions and instructions like Air Raid Precautions.
Due to the number of deaths and accidents on the roads the government was eventually forced to change the regulations. Dipped headlights were permitted if the driver had headlamp covers with three horizontal slits. To help drivers see where they were going in the dark, white lines were painted along the middle of the road. Curb edges and car bumpers were also painted white. To reduce accidents a 20mph speed limit was imposed on night drivers. Ironically then, the first person to be convicted of speeding was driving a hearse. Hand torches were also allowed if they were dimmed with a double thickness of white tissue paper and were switched off during alerts.
The centre of London portrayed in the game suffered a massive amount of damage during the Blitz from September 1940 to May 1941. It has been estimated that more than 12,000 tons of bombs were dropped on London and nearly 30,000 civilians were killed by enemy action. The Blitz also changed the landscape of the city featured in the game. Many famous landmarks were hit, including Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London and the Imperial War Museums.
As the war progressed, driving in the capital during wartime became much less common. In 1940, the first full year of war, civilian car production in the UK amounted to just under 2,000 vehicles. By November, the total number of cars on British roads was 1.3 million, almost 280,000 fewer than a year before. Many cars were commandeered by the military while car manufacturers switched to military versions of their civilian models. In contrast, the number of hackney cabs increased by over 14,000 to over 81,000. However, it was not the car that kept the capital moving in the most challenging of times but London’s public transport services. While doing their jobs in the war, 426 London Transport staff were killed and nearly 3,000 injured. Despite the blackout, air raids, a reduced workforce, requisitioned vehicles and a lack of resources, it was the tube trains, buses and trams that kept London moving.