John Joseph Leeming (1899 – 1981) was a British road engineer. He forwarded controversial ideas for the causes of, and remedies for, road crashes, including the notion that drivers should not always be assumed to be at fault.
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Leeming was born in 1899 and served in the First World War. From 1924, Leeming worked in various road engineering capacities for Oxfordshire County Council, becoming Deputy County Surveyor there, before leaving that role in 1946.[1]
In 1946 Leeming moved to work for Dorset County Council as County Surveyor, where he stayed until his retirement in 1964.[1]
In 1969 Leeming's book "Road Accidents: prevent or punish?" was published. A 2007 review, on the publication of a reprint of the book, described the book as controversial, and as being written by an "enlightened highways expert".[2]
Leeming's book: "Road Accidents: prevent or punish?", describes his ideas and views of the causes of road casualties, and of how best they can be tackled. The book is described as attacking the beginnings of the blame culture, with Leeming convinced that road casualties could be reduced by using road engineering methods based on evidence derived from the scientific analysis of the causes of road crashes, and that drivers were not the main cause of many road safety problems.[2]
Leeming described the phenomenon of induced demand, with respect to road traffic volumes:[3]
Motorways and bypasses generate traffic, that is, produce extra traffic, partly by inducing people to travel who would not otherwise have done so by making the new route more convenient than the old, partly by people who go out of their direct route to enjoy the greater convenience of the new road, and partly by people who use the towns bypassed because they are more convenient for shopping and visits when through traffic has been removed.
The risk compensation principle, upon which Hans Monderman's counter-intuitive shared space concept is founded was described by Leeming:[3]
It can safely be said that places which look dangerous do not have accidents, or very few. They happen at places which do not look dangerous. The reason for this is simple. The motorist is as intelligent as the ‘local people’. If a place looks dangerous, he can see that it is so, he takes care and there are no accidents.
Leeming wrote the following books:[1]