Early motoring mishaps and public information postcards

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The fear of things to come is nothing new, and with the advent of the motor-car concerns about accidents understandably grew. This French postcard was sent to us by PreWarCar.com’s publisher and carries the title Les progrès de la locomotion, which doesn’t need a translation.

It seems a bit of an odd picture, though, with a woman being run over by someone’s mighty motor, out of which the goggle-wearing chauffeur has just stepped to see the result of his driving. The caption adds: ‘Si seulement c’etait ma belle mère’ – ‘if only it was my lovely mother’. This could be one of the very first road safety campaigns, or so it seems to us.

When you look closer, you may notice the ‘IV’ in front of the caption, meaning this is just one photograph from a series. That made us curious. Would there be any chance of finding the other picture postcards? There was and we did, and it makes a lovely little sequence. The first of them is the merriest, with the lady now as a passenger smiling and waving to the camera, supposedly on an excursion in Normandy. Numbers I, II and III we found next, slightly colourized and showing the staged run-up to the accident. Great stuff. Of course, we must ask about the car. We think it’s a De Dion Bouton, but you’ll tell us if we’re mistaken…

Words: Jeroen Booij; pictures: archive/Delcampe.net
 

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