Rumble Strip: If you want to get away with murder, buy a car

Rumble strips alert us to hazards. The noise, the jolt, the vibration of those grooves at the edge of the road wakes and prevents drivers from going off the edge of the road.

Sometimes we all need a wake-up call: over 1.2 million people are killed in road traffic accidents around the world each year. By 2020, road traffic accidents could outstrip stroke and HIV as one of the main causes of preventable deaths.

Whether we drive cars, ride motorbikes, pedal bicycles, take public transport or just walk, we all use roads and rely on each other to drive responsibly.

Rumble Strip surprises, challenges, asks us questions that badly need answers and makes us think about things we may prefer to ignore. Woodrow Phoenix’s dry, sometimes painfully mordant wit, backed up by accident statistics, personal observations and case histories, offers a trenchant analysis of the problems of road users everywhere and the risks we all take every day. With sharp, densely inked graphics, he immerses us in the narrative as if we are driving those cars or walking along those streets. He personalises the experience of the commuter, the driver, the pedestrian, the accident victim...because any one of them could be us.