The struggle over pedestrians: Defining the problems of walking in the 1960s and 1970s

“Pedestrians of the world, unite!” In 1965, Finnish people visiting a cinema would see the 12-min educational short film Mr. Pedestrian before the feature film of the evening and hear this slogan. The film was financed by the Traffic Committee of the Accident Prevention Association (Talja), which had a parliamentary mandate to carry out traffic safety work in Finland. Combining a comedy style and an experimental format it addressed the question of a pedestrian’s place in traffic, showing the erratic figure of Mr. Pedestrian struggling to cross the street, alternating with sequences of other scenes related to traffic and walking. The call for pedestrians to unite was combined with a scene from a First of May march. It was clearly meant to be humorous but also sobering as it was directly followed by a picture of baby feet and the voice-over saying: “Already as children we are falsely led to believe that a pedestrian really has some special rights. […] In reality, the truth is merciless”. ¹

Talja's message to pedestrians was clear: they should learn their lesson and cede the right of way to cars. They should be quick, alert and patient to ensure their own safety. The idea of pedestrians uniting might have seemed especially ridiculous as pedestrians did not have organisations or spokespersons, but the situation was about to change. In 1968, the traffic policy association Enemmistö ry (“The Majority”) was founded to place the rights of pedestrians, cyclists and users of public transport on the political agenda.

In this article, I will study the contested definitions of pedestrians in Finland in the 1960s and 1970s. I will especially analyse definitions produced by the two associations mentioned above: the traffic safety association Talja and the activist traffic policy association Enemmistö. Talja had already been founded in 1938, but its activities multiplied in number and intensity at the beginning of the 1950s, when the parliamentary traffic safety committee gave Talja its official mandate and decided to finance it through the obligatory traffic insurance of car owners. ² Increasing public criticism towards Talja during the late 1960s led to its reorganisation and renaming in 1971 as the Finnish Road Safety Council (Liikenneturva), which from 1974 became a public institution under the control of state authority and included representation from political parties. Enemmistö was active especially during the late 1960s and the first half of 1970s, aiming to influence both local and national traffic policy through administrative and political channels as well as through demonstrations and other direct actions. Both traffic safety actors and urban traffic activists were defining pedestrians, in order to speak to and about them.

Pedestrians became a specific point of interest starting in the late 1950s when Finland was rapidly urbanising. The same period can be identified as the breakthrough of Finnish consumer society, with the car as one of the most important consumer products. In 1955 only every 50th Finn had a passenger car, in 1965 already every tenth, and in 1974 every fifth. ³ In urban traffic, the mid-1960s were a tipping point after which passenger car traffic became the dominating feature of the urban streets. ⁴

The Finnish case is historically interesting, as the change on urban streets was condensed into a short period of time that coincided with the era of high-modernist car-city planning, and very soon also societal criticism towards the negative effects of cars. In countries that had experienced private motorisation earlier, the question of pedestrian rights and obligations had also been negotiated more extensively decades earlier. ⁵ Research on these negotiations has demonstrated how the norms around dominant automobility not only defined people in cars as licensed drivers but also pedestrians as an increasingly regulated group. ⁶ However, this automobile domination was also repeatedly challenged, public protests in the 1960s and early 1970s delaying and sometimes curbing some of the most extreme cases of car infrastructure. ⁷ Social movements have been identified as an important factor, for example in placing cycling on the agenda of urban planning, ⁸ but in general the history of citizen initiatives, protests and activism remains under-researched. ⁹ Concentrating on the case of Finnish pedestrian activism and contrasting it with the traffic safety paradigm highlights the need to pay more attention to the role walking and pedestrians have in our thinking about urban space. Whereas walkability and pedestrianisation are now often seen as keys to making cities better, ¹⁰ my case demonstrates the concrete difficulties of pedestrian advocacy, for example when compared with bicycle promotion and cyclists’ organisations.

In this article, I consider the historical struggle over pedestrians as something Pierre Bourdieu has named “symbolic struggle”, meaning the struggle over legitimate world-views and so-called common sense as well the right to impose these. ¹¹ Social positions and power relations related to traffic had to be defined and struggled over in the changing traffic situation. This struggle however did not limit itself only to actual traffic situations but concerned the symbolic power to define the order of the social world and to form relevant groups that could have a say in it. In this sense, I will consider the struggle over definitions concerning pedestrians as a social and political power struggle by studying the two major groups of actors making claims over pedestrians. What kinds of order and world-views were created in this struggle and with what kinds of results?

As source material, I use the archival materials of the traffic safety organisation Talja and its successor Liikenneturva, consisting mainly of published materials such as leaflets, campaign materials, surveys and conference publications as well as the archive of traffic policy association Enemmistö that holds, for example, plans, reports, proceedings, correspondence and statements, but also leaflets and the published magazines of the association. Together with related media texts published in newspapers, these are studied as the textual dimension of the symbolic struggle. In the first two sections, I introduce the two social spaces or fields of forces in which the struggle took place, the changing traffic and the changing city, and analyse the relevant forces and discussions. In the following two sections, I scrutinise more closely how the symbolic struggle between the two main actors unfolded in definitions of pedestrians, and then consider its results in the final section.

What it means to be a pedestrian in a traffic war

In 1959, as part of its annual traffic-week event, Talja presented the “Constitution for Harmony on the Street”. This constitution was not actual legislation, but a way of promoting traffic safety through the idea of harmony. It is noteworthy that it solely concentrated on the relationship between car drivers and pedestrians, although cycling was still a major mode of traffic. ¹² The constitution was formulated in five paragraphs, one that addressed car drivers, two that addressed pedestrians, and two that addressed both. Pedestrians should use zebra crossings and not cross the road elsewhere. Drivers should let the pedestrians pass at the zebra crossings. Paragraphs that addressed both were the last two:

4 § Pedestrian! Follow from a car how inconsiderately a pedestrian can behave. Car driver! Take a walk sometime and feel what it means to be a pedestrian.

5 § Harmony on the street between a pedestrian and a car driver will be created when both show friendliness and politeness towards each other. ¹³

The constitution was ceremonially signed by representatives of both groups, but it is evident that the pedestrian representation was very thin. Those who signed were the heads of three prominent automobile associations and a representative of Talja, as well as two representatives of pedestrians: Vieno Simonen who was minister of social affairs and the chair of the home economics organisation Marttaliitto, and Professor Lauri Pihkala. ¹⁴ Pihkala was a well-known figure in Finnish sports education, professional athletics coach, as well as a right-wing political activist, propagating for a healthy lifestyle that would strengthen the Finnish people. Selecting him as the representative of pedestrians framed walking as a leisure activity, rather than an everyday means of transportation. Simonen as a representative of the home economics movement seems to refer to the role of walking in housewives’ and mothers’ work that had become a point of interest in the efficiency work during its golden era in the 1950s. ¹⁵ Both choices highlight the unevenness of organisational power. While the interests of the car drivers were represented through several well-established organisations, pedestrians lacked organisations of their own. Thus, pedestrians were what Bourdieu called a “class on paper”, a statistically separable group of people, in this case a traffic mode that had some similar practices and properties but did not exist as a real group, an organised movement with spokespersons. ¹⁶

This situation was by no means unique. In other countries, too, the car lobby was from the early days of motorisation much stronger, more organised nationally and internationally, and in possession of more societal and political power than groups demanding the rights of other traffic modes. ¹⁷ In Finland, car owners had organised in the first Finnish automobile club in 1919, and two further associations were founded in the 1920s. At the beginning of the 1960s, more than half of car-owners in Finland were members in one of these three associations that in the early 1970s joined together to form one large organisation, Autoliitto (The Automobilie and Touring Club of Finland). ¹⁸ When the advisory board of Talja was established in 1952 car-owners’ associations became part of it, alongside professional automotive-related associations and representatives of the police, the traffic insurance association, public roads administration, Ministry of Education, armed forces and railways. Besides the Ministry of Education, the child protection alliance was the only direct representative of other than motorised modes. ¹⁹

Talja's work was mostly centred on car drivers. However, pedestrians also started to come into Talja's focus due to their large share of traffic accident victims. During the period studied here, around a third of persons killed in traffic were pedestrians. Together with cyclists they accounted for more than half of traffic deaths. ²⁰ The overall number of deadly traffic accidents had started to rise sharply at the end of the 1950s and rose every year until the mid-1960s. It stayed at the same high level for the rest of the 1960s and then reached an all-time high in 1972. In international comparison, the numbers of traffic deaths in relation to the number of motorised vehicles were exceptionally high in Finland and sparked worry at the highest political level. President Urho Kekkonen addressed the problem several times, for example in his New Year's Speech in 1973. He pointed out that Nordic comparisons were revealing: Whereas Finland had 13.7 traffic deaths per 10 000 cars, the more motorised neighbouring country Sweden only had 5.7. ²¹

An easily identifiable reason behind the high fatality numbers in Finland was the lack of speed limits. Whereas Sweden, for example, had introduced speed limits on all roads in the 1960s, the Finnish state was slow to follow the international trend. Speed limits were tested, but a special committee set by the Ministry of Transport in the late 1960s did not evaluate them as efficient. ²² Talja's own research on speed limit tests painted a different picture, but due to the strong opposition by automotive associations and interest groups it was reluctant to recommend them, ²³ and even openly opposed them when a new minister of transport expressed willingness to introduce them in the early 1970s. ²⁴ After President Kekkonen's intervention in 1973, a three-year testing period of speed limits in different parts of Finland started. Additionally, state-wide speed limits of 80 km/h were introduced for the first half of the year 1974, motivated by the oil-crisis. During this six-month period, road accident fatalities dropped by almost 40%, only to increase again after the limits were lifted. ²⁵ General state-wide speed limits were not introduced until 1978, although partial speed limits had already now been in use for five years.

The negative development in traffic accidents had led to heavy public criticism towards Talja. I argue that Talja’s reluctance to accept speed limits led to the need to find other solutions and manifested in an increased focus on pedestrians, starting in the 1950s and intensifying during the 1960s and early 1970s. Talja's efforts might not seem entirely logical, as the materials for pedestrians often focused on urban surroundings where some speed limits had been introduced by the cities early on. ²⁶ However, the active focus on pedestrians seems to have served to legitimate the stalling of nation-wide speed limits in a situation of growing traffic fatality numbers. For example, a major feature of this focus is clearly visible in the above described “Constitution for Harmony on the Street”, the effort to define pedestrians as seemingly equal to other traffic modes. Highlighting “harmony” and later “politeness” served to play down the apparent differences and thus placed responsibility for traffic safety at least as much on the shoulders of pedestrians as car drivers. Donald Weber has detected a similar tendency in the Belgian road safety policy of the 1930s and 1940s: due to conflicting interests, the authorities opted for non-policy and preferred pedestrian education over traffic regulation reforms. ²⁷ Also changes in the Finnish traffic law during the 1960s especially targeted pedestrians, obliging them to follow the traffic signals and to use the shoulder of the road in absence of a pavement. ²⁸

The pedestrian as a figure in traffic safety work did pre-exist. Pedestrian rights and obligations had, for example, been discussed when the first state-wide traffic law was passed in the parliament in 1926. Following international trends, ²⁹ local and nation-wide “traffic weeks” were organised from 1934 by the traffic safety committee of the automobile associations. These and related traffic education materials particularly, although not exclusively, targeted pedestrians and cyclists, while quite clearly aiming to diminish the blame on car drivers for traffic accidents. ³⁰ Internationally, this tendency of inter-war traffic safety measures to legitimise the freedom of automobility by controlling pedestrians is well known. ³¹ Peter Norton has demonstrated that in the USA the safety narrative had already been rewritten by the 1930s. The new safety paradigm stressed the need for cautiousness and control of all traffic participants, although the preceding narrative of evil automobiles and innocent pedestrians never entirely vanished. ³²

In Finland, too, the safety discourse included the figure of the reckless pedestrian as early as the 1930s, but the negotiation remained unresolved and reappeared in the 1950s. As late as 1966, the largest Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, wrote about traffic fatalities in a manner that clearly laid more responsibility on car drivers than pedestrians, stating that even though pedestrians might make mistakes they should be considered as the weaker party while car drivers wilfully endangered both themselves and others. The newspaper also compared the number of traffic fatalities to the number of Finnish soldiers fallen during the Second World War, calling the current situation “a traffic war”. ³³ Thus, in public discussion there were at least some sympathetic feelings towards pedestrians. One piece of evidence of this was also the publication of the book Alas auton pakkovalta (“Down with the tyranny of the car”) by the large commercial publisher Tammi as part of its pamphlet series in 1969. The book was written by some of the founding members of the traffic policy association Enemmistö, and alongside several thematic chapters included Enemmistö's traffic manifesto consisting of 26 demands and calling upon “all pedestrians, cyclists, and users of public transport: let us unite our forces to support our common interests and legitimate demands”. ³⁴ Now, a group of actors had appeared aiming to do what Talja had depicted in such an absurd light only a couple of years earlier, to unite the pedestrians politically. Consequently, pedestrians as what Bourdieu calls “the occupants of the dominated position” ³⁵ appeared as something more than just “a class on paper” and the symbolic struggle began in earnest.

Pedestrians as urban sewage

Enemmistö (“The Majority”) was founded in autumn 1968 when around 50 people gathered in Helsinki, invited by the lawyer Lauri Nordberg and the historian of architecture Asko Salokorpi. ³⁶ Enemmistö is often described as one of the “one cause movements” that emerged in Finland in the late 1960s, focusing, for example, on pacifism, equality of women and men, anti-racism, homelessness, social equality, and development aid. ³⁷ Enemmistö still exists today, but was at its most active from the late 1960s till the mid-1970s. Board members typically had a university education, for example, in architecture, engineering, social sciences or humanities and mostly lived in Helsinki, like the majority of members. Membership rose quickly during the first years and was around 4,400 in 1972 and 1973, but began to slowly diminish in the mid-1970s. ³⁸ Many active members of Enemmistö were left-leaning politically, although the association was party-politically neutral. It played a part in the new political definition of traffic questions in the city politics of Helsinki, with left-wing parties demanding the development of public transport and right-wing parties favouring private motorisation. It also became one of the origins for new kinds of political dimensions as its 1971 chairman Ville Komsi later in the 1970s acted prominently in new Finnish environmental activism and in the early 1980s was elected to the Finnish parliament as one of the first two candidates of the Finnish Green Party. ³⁹ From the very beginning, Enemmistö's activities were two-fold, described as the street-level and the office-level: it organised demonstrations and other public events but also aimed to get a foot-hold in political processes both at the local and national level. ⁴⁰

Enemmistö was in many ways antagonist to Talja. In the above-mentioned pamphlet book, Salokorpi, who had become the association's first chairman, stated: “Enemmistö is not going to carry out traffic education work or hand out reflector ribbons. The purpose of our association is to correct the structural wrongs of urban planning and the harmful attitudes, instead of just passively conforming to them”. ⁴¹ In the same book, the vice-chairman, architect Jorma Mänty had ironically given his chapter headings that cited different Talja campaign slogans, like “Change to politeness”. He characterised Talja as the guardian of traffic morals that gave its blessing to the central role of the car. ⁴²

However, for Enemmistö, the traffic safety discourse was only one of the reference points and less central than questions of urban planning and the urban environment. In its texts and activities, the pedestrian often serves as the lens through which the change in urban areas becomes apparent and falls under critical consideration. From this point of view, defining the place and possibilities of a pedestrian was a central question in the drastic urban renewal that had started in Finland in the 1950s and was on-going in the 1960s and early 1970s. Following the international high modernist principles, traffic planning and engineering had become key parts of urban planning in Finnish cities. ⁴³ Argumentation followed the same lines as elsewhere in Europe: Increasing motorisation would lead to the clogging of city centres and the desired efficiency of car traffic would be lost if cities were not rebuilt to accommodate cars. ⁴⁴ Talja had actively participated in this development as well. For example, it had a representative on the influential committee that defined the need for car parking and driving space in Finnish city planning in 1966, based on the calculation models of increasing motorisation. ⁴⁵

Unlike in traffic safety, pedestrians were not focused on in traffic planning. But neither were they systematically ignored or eliminated by the planners as had happened to cyclists and users of public transport. Broad pavements and pedestrian shopping streets could be incorporated in car city planning. Efficiency would be achieved by shortening walking distances. ⁴⁶ Still, applying the leading principle of efficiency to walking was difficult. Planners tried to define monetary value for walking time by creating separate categories of utilitarian and leisure walking. ⁴⁷ In practice, car-centred plans had a large impact on the quality of walking environments. Raising discussion about this was high on Enemmistö's agenda. Its manifesto stated:

Pedestrians must have the opportunity to move in a way that is not only safe but also quick and pleasant. […] Pedestrian paths must be planned in a way that avoids exposing pedestrians directly to the exhaust fumes of cars. […] Pedestrians must have the opportunity to move on one level, usually the ground level. They must not be led into tunnels like sewage or forced to climb on bridges. ⁴⁸

The comparison to sewage systems highlighted the way in which modernist planning treated pedestrians as a nuisance that had to be tidied away. The concept had already appeared earlier in the 1960s in comments on the new pedestrian traffic infrastructure. Economist Weijo Wainio used it when criticising pedestrian tunnels as a member of Helsinki city council in March 1963. ⁴⁹ Doctor of Psychology Johan Weckroth used the concept in his radio lecture in May 1965 with the title “Back to the Caves”, arguing that the possibly negative impact of tunnels on mental health had not been considered. ⁵⁰ After Enemmistö's book, another pamphlet book used it: Kenen Helsinki (“Whose Helsinki”) was a widely-discussed book written by two young architects criticising the profit-based demolition and renewal of Helsinki city centre. One of its angles was pointing out the way in which the situation of pedestrians was impaired by the renovation, for example by tunnel projects forcing pedestrians into commercial underground spaces, “the sewerage of Helsinki citizens”. ⁵¹

Another major contemporary discussion that Enemmistö's manifesto linked to where the subjects of exhaust fumes and noise. Air pollution became a public health concern in Finland in the 1960s. Whereas clean air had been a relatively vague concept earlier, the scientific approach now created the concept of safe air. ⁵² Noise as a problem was raised in public discussion during the late 1960s and early 1970s by experts and social movements. The question of noise became political especially through the question of traffic planning that Enemmistö highlighted but was also discussed by the emerging environmental movement. ⁵³ In its 1968 book, Enemmistö referred to a range of recent reports and articles published on these issues by national and local committees, occupational health and engineering experts as well as environmentalists. ⁵⁴ Noise and air pollution were newly identified problems of the urban environment that could be highlighted by the perspective of pedestrians. In line with Bourdieu's theory, ⁵⁵ it can be argued that different experts chose to build an alliance with the dominated group of pedestrians in order to challenge the dominant view of the traffic system and urban planning.

An example of highlighting a multitude of urban problems through the figure of the pedestrian was Enemmistö's declaration sent to media on the “Pedestrian Day” organised by the association in Helsinki, May 1974. It begins by describing the situation of pedestrians:

Walking in the centre of Helsinki has become continuously more difficult during recent years. The number of pedestrian crossings has been reduced and the growth in motorised traffic has made crossing the street a hazardous venture, especially for children, the elderly and the disabled. […] Walking in the centre of Helsinki has also become more unpleasant. The voice of one's walking companion is drowned out by the noise and the air is dangerously polluted to breathe. […] The efforts to make space for cars and eliminate the risk posed to pedestrians by relocating foot traffic into underground tunnels has not only bereaved the pedestrians of the multitude of ground level visual experiences but also replaced the insecurity caused by the traffic by the fear of violence. ⁵⁶

Pedestrian Day was the largest pedestrian event organised by Enemmistö and a good example of Enemmistö's efforts to change the symbolic hierarchy and social power-relations between pedestrians and cars. It was carried out in collaboration with over 30 other associations, for example, student and political youth organisations, neighbourhood associations, environmental, cultural and sporting organisations, and public transport providers, as well as associations for pensioners, children, stay-at-home-mothers and the visually impaired. ⁵⁷ Talja's successor Liikenneturva was not among the organisers, but Enemmistö invited it to participate in the pedestrian street relay race, among other authorities. ⁵⁸ The official protector of Pedestrian Day was President Urho Kekkonen, whom Enemmistö had approached with a letter referring to his sporting interests by describing him as “a skilful foot-goer (on skis or without) and well-informed about the problems pedestrians have especially in centres of large cities”. ⁵⁹ In his opening speech on Pedestrian Day, Kekkonen talked about the down-sides of technical development: loss of pleasant environments and human values. He stated: “Unhurried wandering in the forest or the alert passage of an urban person in a city centre can bring forth experiences that are so large and positive that the technical development should not be allowed to disturb them”. ⁶⁰ It is apparent that the President was talking about the effects of motorisation, although he avoided targeting cars explicitly. From the point of view of symbolic struggle, cars not only disturbed pedestrians but were a major force in defining pedestrians, as will be discussed next.

Guilty, weak and invisible?

Traffic safety actors and materials defined a pedestrian as someone who was potentially run over by a car and whose role was to avoid this by adjusting his or her behaviour. This perspective lived on, even when Talja's work in the 1970s started to include urban planning perspectives, for example in the form of national traffic safety congresses. These included numerous presentations from Talja representatives, but also by the police and the education system, researchers, traffic engineers and urban planners. As early as the 1971 congress, traffic engineers highlighted the need to design safer and more pleasant cities for pedestrians. A traffic engineer for Helsinki city expressed his doubts on the effects of traffic safety education and stated: “If we cannot shape humans to adapt to the present-day traffic, we have to shape the traffic environment to accommodate the physical and psychological abilities of humans”. ⁶¹ Another traffic engineer introduced different traffic separation models, concluding that the separation of non-motorised and motorised traffic was “the only proper starting point for creating a safe traffic system”. ⁶² The influence of the Swedish SCAFT 1968 traffic separation guidelines was apparent. ⁶³ In Sweden, these guidelines had been one of the milestones in changing the traffic safety focus from individual responsibility and traffic rules to the ideal of the city as a traffic safety machine shaped by technology and planning solutions during the 1960s. ⁶⁴

Against this background, it is noteworthy how the focus on pedestrian responsibility persisted in Talja's work. In the above-mentioned 1971 traffic safety congress, Talja's deputy director discussed the pedestrian, bicycle and moped fatalities and analysed their causes: “Of pedestrians who died in traffic accidents 80 per cent have been deemed guilty of their own death. 60 per cent of injured pedestrians have been identified as the cause of their own injury. The most common mistake made by pedestrians is reckless running or rushing to the street”. ⁶⁵ The concept of the recklessly rushing pedestrian had been pushed hard by Talja in the 1950s and 1960s. Leaflets for pedestrians were titled “Don’t rush to the street” and a traffic week programme introduced the characters of “Family Headlong” or “Mister Headlong”. They were actors hired to walk the streets in a “reckless” manner. Inhabitants of the city were urged to find these actor pedestrians by asking every “reckless” pedestrian if they were Headlong. Successful spotting would be rewarded by a monetary prize. Thus, whereas car drivers could compete for prizes in skilful driving, pedestrians were invited to police fellow pedestrians. ⁶⁶ Similar tactics had been used already in the early 1920s in American cities, to introduce the concept of jaywalking. ⁶⁷

From the accident-oriented point of view, pedestrians were not only reckless but also unprotected. Pedestrians as well as cyclists and moped riders were characterised by being less protected than car drivers. ⁶⁸ During Talja's 1966 traffic week in Turku, the main local newspaper defined the pedestrian as “the unprotected tyrant amongst cars” and also as “the weakest cog in the flywheel of traffic” that by rushing and bumbling around without discipline ignored the clear and simple rules and slowed down urban traffic. ⁶⁹ The third definition was invisibility: a lot of effort was put into promoting pedestrian reflectors and the pedestrian's responsibility to ensure their visibility to car drivers. ⁷⁰

In 1966, Talja printed leaflets urging pedestrians to use reflectors, titled “Reflector: so that you are not run over” and “The driver cannot see”. ⁷¹ In 1972, Liikenneturva's national survey indicated that only 30.1% of pedestrians used a reflector. ⁷² The following year, the campaign “Heijastin-73” (“Reflector-73”) was launched. The campaign referred to the high number of pedestrian fatalities and argued that many of them could be avoided by using a reflector. Newspapers reported that pedestrians were indifferent about their own lives as they did not use reflectors despite having been told about their importance. ⁷³ Turun Sanomat newspaper wrote: “The only chance a pedestrian has to survive unharmed in the traffic, is to avoid a collision with vehicles. The only chance to avoid a collision is to make oneself seen. The best way to make oneself seen is to use a reflector!” ⁷⁴

Interestingly, Enemmistö also participated in the campaign, alongside Liikenneturva, the car owners’ association Autoliitto, the police, the traffic insurance association, public roads administration, the Ministry of Education, the Finnish Red Cross and reflector producers. All the participants published statements at the launch of the campaign, mostly highlighting pedestrians’ responsibility to be visible in the dark. Autoliitto, Liikenneturva and the traffic insurance association additionally made a statement together, demanding that the use of reflector should be made mandatory. ⁷⁵ Public roads administration promised in its statement that pedestrian reflectors would become part of the traffic law, ⁷⁶ but Enemmistö opposed these views in its own statement. It wanted to promote reflectors only as a temporary solution, until traffic separation ensured the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Furthermore, it stated that it was “against making reflectors mandatory as this would continue the development that places the responsibility of automobility's dangers on pedestrians”. ⁷⁷

The case of the reflector campaign is illustrative of Enemmistö's attempts and difficulties to define pedestrians from the point of view of their rights against the dominant traffic safety definition of pedestrian as reckless and unprotected. These attempts can be understood in the way Bordieu describes the symbolic struggle for the monopoly of naming things and thus producing a vision of the social world. ⁷⁸ The very first paragraph of Enemmistö's traffic manifesto in 1968 targeted the definition of pedestrians as guilty: “Our current traffic law is shaped in a way that makes pedestrians guilty of the accident in most cases when they are run over”. ⁷⁹ The association criticised the idea that traffic education could save pedestrians when car drivers were legally entitled to ignore and kill them. It also referred to the concept of the rushing pedestrian, trying to rationalise it: “Children and elderly wanting to cross the street have to wait for their turn for a very long time, no wonder that they finally are desperate enough to rush in front of a car”. ⁸⁰

Children and the elderly were groups that stood out when pedestrian safety was discussed. For example, in 1972 they accounted for half of the pedestrian fatalities. In 31% of the pedestrian deaths, the victim was over 65 years old. ⁸¹ Together with the disabled, they were recognised as the most unprotected groups in traffic, also by traffic planners. ⁸² However, whereas the elderly and disabled were practically invisible in the traffic safety work, children received considerable attention. The large majority of Talja's and Liikenneturva's traffic education materials to pedestrians and cyclists was targeted at children. Most prominently, all school children received a “traffic ABC book” between 1951 and the mid-1970s. From 1954 on, traffic education was part of the compulsory curriculum, with materials and instructions prepared in co-operation with Talja. ⁸³ In the 1970s, the strong focus on educating children continued and children as young as three years old were targeted, although the general attitude started to shift towards the focus on safe environments. ⁸⁴ Enemmistö criticised the focus on educating children by referring to studies that demonstrated children’s inability to observe traffic situations. ⁸⁵ Its 1972 hand-out recruiting new members satirically mimicked Talja's materials by using the name “Letter to parents” also used in Talja's leaflets, accusing Talja of protecting cars, not children. ⁸⁶ Internationally, children were the group of pedestrians that raised most debate. Not only were children's traffic deaths in many cases the trigger to local or even nation-wide protests against unsafe traffic environments, ⁸⁷ they were also used as a main argument for traffic separation. ⁸⁸

Enemmistö was not only critical towards Talja's and later Liikenneturva's work on “attitudes”, but also towards the way in which public discussion on traffic focused almost solely on accidents. ⁸⁹ Enemmistö wanted to criticise the workings of the whole traffic system, likely making it reluctant to use child deaths as a main argument. Instead, it thematised different equality problems caused by the car-centred system, for example the negative effects decentralised urban structures had on the mobility of various groups: children, the youth, the elderly, women, the disabled and people with low income. ⁹⁰ Motorisation highlighted existing problems of equality. For example, Enemmistö stated that the smell of alcohol was perceived as more disturbing than car exhaust fumes in public spaces, referring to yet another topical urban problem, the homelessness of alcoholics. ⁹¹ Whereas the traffic safety actors promoted definitions that made different traffic modes seem equal although differing in physical vulnerability, traffic policy activists highlighted social inequality through the figure of the pedestrian as a vulnerable traffic participant.

From car-haters to light traffic

It appears to have been more difficult for Enemmistö to actively promote pedestrianism than, for example, to fight for better public transport connections or the rights of cyclists. The most prominent case in the association's pedestrian policy as well as the first and best-known of its projects was to promote a pedestrian street for Helsinki, as a compromise regarding its more radical ideal of a car-less city centre. ⁹² Most other practical cases of pedestrian policy were directed towards legal or planning measures that harmed pedestrian rights, for example the decree in 1969 that banned pedestrians crossing when there was a red light, attempts to reduce the number of pedestrian crossings, and the above-mentioned construction of pedestrian tunnels. Car-domination not only narrowed the physical space of pedestrians but also their space in the struggle over definitions. Illustrative of this is the framing of pedestrian activism as car-hatred.

Internationally, from the inter-war period until the 1970s both traffic planning and traffic education concentrated largely on pedestrians crossing the street. ⁹³ In Finland, the 1971 traffic safety congress discussed a legal reform concerning pedestrian crossings: Now only crossings explicitly marked as pedestrian crossings were counted as such. ⁹⁴ The congress publication includes a comment from a businessman participant, underlining that traffic education about this should be carried out in a manner that would foster harmony between different traffic modes, as the reform might make pedestrians feel oppressed. Without naming Enemmistö, the commentator made clear that the association was the cause of his concern: “We know that over a couple of years an organisation that claims to represent pedestrians has quite regularly and systematically started to spread propaganda against motorised traffic, even directing its hate and opinions towards the vehicle itself, the car”. ⁹⁵

Based on newspaper sources, “car hatred” (autoviha) was a concept used in Finnish public discussion especially in the 1970s, often referring to Enemmistö and other traffic activists but also to politicians and planners. ⁹⁶ From the very beginning on, Enemmistö argued that it was not driven by “blind car hatred”. ⁹⁷ However, some of its activities were used as evidence to the contrary, such as its participation in the “Pollution Week” organised by veterinary students in Helsinki in April 1969, including the ritualistic destruction of a passenger car, ⁹⁸ and the fact that the association organised events for the international anti-car-week declared by the Dutch group De Lastige Amsterdammer in October 1970. ⁹⁹ Even without such demonstrative actions, it seemed generally difficult to avoid the label of car hatred when talking about pedestrian rights. Car hatred as a concept had already appeared in Finnish newspapers in the late 1920s, when the interests of car drivers conflicted with other groups, for example horse owners. One of the earliest appearances was in a humorous column imagining the foundational meeting of the fictional association Defence Union of Unprotected Pedestrians Against Cars, held “under furious car hatred and warm feelings”. ¹⁰⁰

The concept of car hatred was used to underline the supposed absurdity of pedestrians uniting. Furthermore, it located the idea of pedestrian rights in an antagonism between the pedestrian and the car. In the definition struggle, both traffic security actors and traffic policy activists tried to steer away from this simple antagonism in their own ways, but with little success. Pedestrians were mainly defined as non-cars, as traffic units outside the cars, thus making car the defining unit of traffic. This development has been on-going also throughout the recent decades. John Urry has described how the rhythm of the road forces pedestrians to synchronise their movement to the mobility of machines. ¹⁰¹ Tauri Tuvikene has observed pedestrians being increasingly treated according to the standards of cars, demanding from them road-worthiness, for example in the form of reflectors. ¹⁰² The difficulty of defining pedestrians in any way that does not centre on the car was also highlighted by the Finnish concept of “light traffic” (kevyt liikenne). It emerged in the middle of the definition struggle in the end of the 1960s and became common during the early 1970s in planning and research contexts, referring to pedestrians, cyclists and moped-drivers. ¹⁰³

From the traffic safety perspective, “light traffic” could in the early 1970s include even motorcycles as an unprotected mode, ¹⁰⁴ but in the late 1970s the concept had stabilised to follow the principles of traffic separation. ¹⁰⁵ Enemmistö also partially adopted the concept, although its own division of modes excluded mopeds and included public transport, drawing the line between individual motorisation and other modes. In all of these divisions, pedestrians appeared at the farthest end of the spectrum of non-motorised, unprotected and in need of separation. At the beginning of the 1980s, Enemmistö also started to use the adjective soft in connection to urban and traffic planning. ¹⁰⁶ Again, the pedestrians were at the far end of the definition, “the users of the softest technology”: ¹⁰⁷ their feet. Pedestrians as the ultimate non-cars were at the core of Enemmistö's traffic policy aiming against the technocratic car city visions. As Martin Emanuel has demonstrated, pedestrians were not easy to systemise or govern as traffic. ¹⁰⁸ At the same time, their characteristics as non-vehicles made them also the most difficult to advocate for in the symbolic struggle.

Pedestrians out of focus

In 1982, an Enemmistö bulletin announced a meeting discussing the future of the association: should it be disbanded, or did it still serve a purpose? The cyclist group, for years the most active part of the association, had in 1981 become an association of its own, Helsinki Region Cyclists. The bulletin published comments from some active members from the past. Only the 1975 chairwoman Marja Nick expressed the opinion that the association had served its purpose as the role of “light traffic” was now taken much more seriously than earlier. Others found that the association was still needed: For example, its first chairman Salokorpi commented that the first project of the association was now complete as the pedestrian street of Aleksanterinkatu was just being finalised, but otherwise the traffic policy situation was not much improved. Lauri Nordberg, also a founding member, stated that even though politicians had become eager to pay lip service to the needs of pedestrians, real action was lacking. ¹⁰⁹ 1971 vice chairman Vilhelm Helander commented:

Some 10–15 years ago the frontlines were very sharp. All in all, it was clearly implied that it was the right of a white male to drive to work. The polemic was quite clear-cut. At that time Enemmistö had tremendous significance in articulating these topics. Now, the situation is a good bit harder as the official goals include improving pedestrian conditions, developing public transport and so forth. This is of course all very well. But now it is much harder to get to the core of the things, first you must peel away the thick layer of apparent claims. ¹¹⁰

Indeed, the second half of the 1970s had seen a shift in the positions of the definition struggle, including organisational changes. The Parliamentary Traffic Safety Committee started speed limit testing in 1973, and in 1974 Talja's successor Liikenneturva was transformed into a public institution under direct state control. In the national traffic safety congress of 1978, Liikenneturva's car engineer gave a presentation on the safety of “light traffic”, solely concentrating on the role of cars, their technological solutions and speed. He looked back at what he called the dark years of traffic fatalities in the early 1970s and stated how political decisions had been the key to change: In the early 1970s, “the means to decrease fatalities and accidents were known, but the power to make decisions accordingly was lacking”. ¹¹¹ Since then, especially the number of pedestrian deaths had diminished significantly, more than halving from the worst year's numbers.

Another example of the shift is the leaflet published for the “Safe Urban Traffic Week 1975” that was organised jointly by several cities, the public roads administration and Liikenneturva. The leaflet urged city-dwellers to become active and to demand a better traffic policy and safer planning solutions for their living environments. It also mentioned a modal shift from car traffic to “light traffic” as a possibility for improving traffic safety. Still, it was also pointed out that in many cities, half of the pedestrian victims of traffic accidents had crossed the street when there was a red light. However, the focus was clearly on the traffic environment. “Write to the city government […] and ask for improvements”, the leaflet encouraged. ¹¹²

Making traffic questions political has been identified as Enemmistö's main achievement. ¹¹³ The association did not have much direct success in achieving its practical goals. It also failed to acquire financial support and struggled with a lack of money when membership numbers diminished. But all the while several of its members gained influence as politicians, committee members and architects. Helsinki carried out a pedestrian survey in 1971 and stated that walking was to be considered the foremost traffic mode in the city centre. ¹¹⁴ At the same time, traffic planning in Finland began to treat pedestrian and cycling traffic practically as one mode, in line with the concept of “light traffic”, leading to “light traffic” paths as the planning solution. In 1982, cities and communities were legally obliged to provide “light traffic” infrastructure. ¹¹⁵ Enemmistö had already expressed critical opinions about combined lanes in 1972 and again in the early 1980s, as they often meant taking space from pedestrians for cyclists and triggered conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians, ¹¹⁶ but it seemed difficult to advocate for pedestrians politically. This was especially clear in comparison with the bicycle advocacy that now had an active association of its own. Enemmistö continued its work, also, for example, becoming a delegate in Liikenneturva. However, its most active years were over. One of the 1980s Enemmistö activists pondered upon the development after discussing with some of the older members in 1984: Even though the groups the association advocated for had seen some improvements, one of the main original goals had not been achieved, namely stopping the flood of passenger cars. Should the association now shift its focus accordingly and try to educate people on how to use their cars in a sensible way? ¹¹⁷

Something similar can be observed elsewhere. Many urban social movements that started at the end of the 1960s had run their course by the end of the 1970s. ¹¹⁸ Everywhere motorisation proceeded, although non-motorised modes were now officially promoted. At the same time, the bicycle morphed into a symbol of certain political and cultural identities connected to the environmentalist movement. ¹¹⁹ The lobbying of bicycle organisations also became professionalised; especially in the Netherlands where it had broad public support, but also elsewhere. ¹²⁰ Why did this not happen with pedestrian activism? Looking at the definition struggle in the Finnish case can help to analyse this question. Although associations like Enemmistö tried to advocate for pedestrians as a political group by acquiring the mandate to speak in its name, ¹²¹ pedestrians proved difficult to mobilise as a group and the struggle for the dominant definition did not end in the victory of pedestrian rights but in the dilution of pedestrians into another statistical group, “light traffic”.

Conclusions

The quickly changing urban environment and traffic situation created a need to define pedestrians, but throughout the 1960s and 1970s it remained difficult to define them in a satisfactory manner. In the end, the definition struggle seemed to result in a compromise that made pedestrians almost invisible. Diminished fatalities after the introduction of speed limits and traffic separation measures reduced the need to define pedestrians as guilty, but at the same time the ongoing mass-motorisation and the normalisation of its spatial and temporal system made it increasingly difficult to define pedestrians in a way that radically challenged this system. In this sense, the disappearance of pedestrians as a group legitimated the social world built around the car. Pedestrians appeared as the opposite of the car in both traffic safety and activist definitions. They were weak, unprotected, and soft. In traffic safety definitions, attempts were made to make them more car-like, playing down the differences between cars and non-cars. But their existence as non-vehicles made them difficult to grasp and define. Although this article is based on the empirical case of Finland in the 1960s and 1970s, such questions concerning the definitions of pedestrians and the promotion of pedestrianism can very probably also be observed elsewhere and should be taken into account even in the present-day quest for pedestrian cities.

Pedestrians were never totally ignored or erased. The system of automobility necessitated a certain amount of walking. This also brought pedestrians into focus for a while, but then grouped them in with others by definitions centred on the car and solving car-related problems. They blended into the group of light traffic, of non-cars. Pedestrians were crucial in the formation of the legitimate social order of the street and urban space, but their flexibility evaded definitions. Thus, the world-view they and their advocates could agitate for remained diffuse and difficult to express. Difficulty of definition meant difficulty in enforcing rules but also difficulty in advocacy. Pedestrians were everyone and no-one. Being a pedestrian was not an identity, which made the idea of pedestrians uniting and actively demanding their rights almost comical. Although pedestrians were numerous, they did not unite in protest. In that sense, pedestrians remained what Bourdieu calls “a class on paper”: a group of agents in similar conditions and likely having similar interests, but not mobilising for struggle that would make them an actual class. As long as traffic is organised as a struggle between the modes, pedestrians will be at disadvantage, but through their flexibility they also constantly call this organisation into question and make its inequalities visible.