60 years of the M1: how we covered the opening of the UK's first motorway

This note chimes with a similar one sounded by Ernest Marples, in his speech at the opening of the road: “This motorway starts a new era in road travel. It is in keeping with the bold, exciting and scientific age in which we live. It is a powerful weapon to add to our transport system. But like all powerful instruments it can be a power for good or evil.” He emphasised that drivers must “use discipline, common sense and obey the rules,” or else risk “disaster and tragedy”.

As well as celebrating the motorway, then, a large part of our coverage was also centred around explaining the road and advising drivers how to use it efficiently and safely.

“At the terminal roundabouts drivers will simply feed into the appropriate carriageway,” we wrote, “accelerate to a cruising speed happily within the car’s capabilities, and sustain it until the opposite terminal is reached, or until some earlier access flyover if the driver wishes to leave the Motorway before the end. Joining and leaving at flyover access junctions is equally simple, but requires some explanations.

“First, one never turns right. Drawing A shows the route taken by traffic leaving the Motorway and joining the all-purpose roads to turn to the right of the original direction of travel. It will be seen that one filters to the left in all cases when leaving the Motorway, regardless of which direction is to be taken later. The filter ramps lead to a roundabout below or above the Motorway, and it is there that the change of direction is made.

“Second, one never makes a turn. The accent is on filtering, and the ramps join and leave the main carriageways at a gentle angle. They should be entered at speed, and braking (while leaving) and acceleration (while joining) should be done on the main carriageway every time it reaches a flyover-access junction, though drivers will be well advised - particularly in these early months - to be prepared for inexperienced drivers who may brake unnecessarily before filtering away, or who may filter in while travelling much too slowly. Diagram B shows how traffic joins the Motorway by the same filter ramp, regardless of the previous approach direction.”

Of course, in 1959, there were no sat-navs, so a sharp memory was paramount if you didn’t want to miss your junction and have to keep on driving in the wrong direction until the next flyover. Autocar advised drivers to “memorize before they start the road number of the flyover at which they must filter out. For a driver who misses his filter ramp there is no stopping, reversing or turning round: he must press on to the next flyover, filter out, go round the roundabout, filter back on the other carriageway, and return to the one he has missed.” Drivers also needed to check they had enough petrol for their journey before joining the motorway - for, when the M1 first opened, petrol stations serving it had not yet been built - as well as keeping a close eye on their tyre pressures, which were crucial given the relatively high speeds cars would be travelling on the newly-built road.