Half a Century of AA Service on Motorways
The day the 8 mile Preston bypass opened, the AA was ready to help motorists. Robert Gornall was the AA’s first motorway patrol and he was on duty on the Preston by Pass (now the M6) from day one – he even attended the opening ceremony. Robert recalls that in those early motorway days, when there was no speed limit or hard shoulder, things were very different when it came to dealing with breakdowns.
Robert said: “This was entirely new and when we reached a broken down car we simply pushed it, bumper to bumper, out of the way to a place of safety where we could fix it – our vehicles were fitted with special rubber bumpers so as not to cause any damage. And breakdowns came thick and fast because cars just couldn’t cope with the higher speed – engines just simply blew. The vehicles we used were Ford Escorts and even a soft top Land Rover.”
AA President Edmund King said: “1958 really was the start of the motorway age of motoring. Britain’s every growing band of motorists increasingly found they were able to stretch the boundaries of work and leisure when unthinkable journeys of the past gradually became the norm.
“Perhaps we should now be asking ourselves about the next 50 years – are we going to continue to invest in our motorways to build on their success, or do we want traffic to return to those places that the motorways by-passed? Will motorways become high tech with electronic control of cars to maintain their distance or USA style multi-lane freeways?
Motorway facts
The AA, the UK’s largest motoring organisation, was already 68 years old when Britain’s first motorway opened in 1958. That milestone however was probably the most significant event for Britain’s growing population of private motorists.
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