Enough time has gone by for me to admit with only a little embarrassment
that the scheme failed. In its first year, there were just 16 members. For
the second year, only one of them renewed their £10 annual membership.
So of more than £500 spent on launching the club, just £170
was recouped. My embarrassment is mitigated by the knowledge that in the
intervening years others have tried. And failed. There was one club where
membership was free. In another scheme, sponsored by a pub, the person who
was driving was promised free soft drinks. You may well know of others.

And yet the idea has worked in the US, despite the car being more deeply
ingrained into American culture than ours. Official support was there, and
car sharers were allocated their own lanes, where the traffic moved freely.
The scheme has produced its share of weirdos, admittedly. Some people carried
dummies in an effort to beat the queues without giving up lone occupation
of their cars. But it worked, and as far as I know, it still does. And that
in a country where you can still fill up your petrol tank for less than
£10. So why did car sharing fail in Britain?

Our attitude to transport is almost schizophrenic. We expect the government
to provide public transport, but we see cars as a little bit of Utopia.
We close our eyes to the fact that traffic problems are worse than ever.
The M25, ridiculed in 1986, is now accepted for the useless feature that
it is – the subject of descriptions like ‘the only car park visible from
space’. While I am writing this, AA Roadwatch has published the fact that
last year 663 breakdowns or accidents led to traffic jams – one was 19 miles
long – and this on just that one road, 117 miles long. We are still spending
unimaginable amounts of money on roads; much of it is wasted, and by the
time road works are finished they have often been overtaken by the problems
they were intended to overcome.

The recession hasn’t made any real difference, either. Sales of private
cars were only temporarily depressed, and it hasn’t significantly affected
their use. Judging by the current weight of car advertising, the situation
should soon be back to normal. Public transport has all but disappeared
in many country areas. It is too expensive for the young and too daunting
for the old. A few enterprising private hire firms are trying to move with
the times, but most are pegged to the attitudes of the 1960s with prices
of the 1990s. The ‘let’s all work at home with our remote terminals’ dream
has not yet materialised, so the movement of people is as busy as ever.

But I must not criticise without suggesting some alternative. It must
be a radical one, have support from the powers that be and have been thought
out laterally. I work on product labelling and train people how to make
the best use of the space available – on a small bottle, for example –
to put across to users what they need to know how to use its contents safely
and effectively. There is no reason why the principles that I teach cannot
be applied to transport. After all, we are talking about fitting a quart
into a pint pot.

The problem has little to do with what the car is intended to be for.
If all you can do with it in practise is sit in a traffic jam, burning fuel
and getting nowhere, you have to rethink the whole concept. If the problem
is too many cars, the numbers have to be reduced. If it’s cars being underused,
you either have to shrink the car to a one or two-seater, or fill it up
with passengers. There is also another way of looking at the problem, which
I prefer.

Going back to the labelling problem, to fit all the necessary words
onto the pack, sometimes you have to have a pack that’s too big for the
contents just to make room for all the words. In the traffic context, what
may be needed are bigger cars. This is not as silly as it might at first
seem. Bigger cars would satisfy the ego of their drivers, who would be able
to show off further by taking passengers. Bigger cars would not make you
feel your passengers were sitting on top of you. Bigger cars would be more
expensive to run, and that would make people think harder about the cost
of a journey; a 10 per cent reduction in journeys would easily pay for a
bigger car. Bigger cars would be more expensive to buy, but not much more
expensive to make, and so manufacturers could make fewer cars without any
loss of profit.

I have often wondered what it was in the American culture that made
car sharing more acceptable, and the arguments for bigger cars seem to fit
the differences between their road culture and ours. Their fuel is cheaper,
but ours need not be so expensive if the government supported the idea of
fewer but bigger, cars.

It’s tempting to try to drum up support for this idea, just as I did
for car sharing in 1986, but I’m older and more cynical now. Someone will
‘pick it up and run with it’, I’m sure, and whoever does so will need the
backing of politicians. I shall be watching out for politicians who dare
to support it. Anyone who does will get my support at the next election.

Tony Holkham is a freelance labelling consultant based in Chichester.

Perhaps ‘how’ is more to the point. I know many people in the agrochemicals
industry will not agree with me (although many farmers will), but one of
the major defences against such unwanted effects lies in the written word.
The words, that is, on the product pack.

Having worked in the industry for more than 20 years, much of that time
closely associated with product labelling, and latterly as a labels specialist,
I am well aware of the chasm which yawns between the (usually ethical) manufacturer
and the susceptible bystander. Among the intermediaries are merchants, retailers,
farmers and spraying contractors, for example, all jumbled together at the
bottom of the abyss.

Cynics will say that no one reads a label after the first time they
handle a product, whether it be shampoo, paint or pesticide – especially
if they are a professional, with a professional’s contempt for instructions.
A few years ago, I would have agreed. But not any more. Ozone depletion,
water contamination, food additives and many other ‘scares’ have increased
public awareness of the content of the ‘chemicals’ everyone uses. Most people
read labels because if they do not they cannot seek redress if the product
does not work, or compensation if they come to any harm. And most products,
not least pesticides, are so expensive that you can’t afford to get it wrong.

Farmers cannot afford to guess, and to ensure they do it right they
have to read the label every time, even in Britain, where label wording
is agreed with ministry regulators before a product can be sold. Similarly,
farmers who wish to protect the public from harm (and I cannot imagine any
farmer who wouldn’t want to), will also find the necessary steps described
on the product label. Or will they?

Unfortunately, the increase in public awareness of the content and effect
of chemicals has not yet been reflected in label wording. The way advice
or instructions are presented and worded can have an effect on the reader’s
willingness to read, understand, and act accordingly. I don’t think anyone
would argue with the claim that if proper instructions are given and followed,
no one would come to any harm.

But they are not, and they do. And I think I know why.

Anyone who has worked in a large company (and most agrochemicals are
produced by very large companies) will understand the difficulty in making
things happen or (horror of horrors) instituting change. The sheer momentum
of big-company policy and methodology may take years to brake sufficiently
to enable maintenance work (for example, a change of attitude) to take place.
Moving house occurs in the blink of an eye by comparison. Add to that the
momentum of legislation, and you have a virtually unchangeable situation.

Change in the way product information is presented has been a preoccupation
of mine for many years, both professional and private. Some years ago I
introduced (for the multinational chemical company where I worked) a system
for presenting safety text – precautions, warnings and so on – on product
labels. These were designed to help the user easily follow safe practices
in whatever operation was being performed, whether preparatory, while mixing
the product, while spraying or after spraying. In other words, a familiar
format which is easy to read and understand, and quick to refer to. I incorporated
this and many other ideas in a comprehensive manual which was distributed
to the company’s interests worldwide.

The idea was taken up by the international industry association, and
I was involved in the preparation of a book which would offer similar advice
to many companies.

But despite these efforts – and I do not knock any effort being made
to improve safety – people are still at risk. If all cases of pesticide
exposure were collected from institutions and companies, they would constitute
a worrying problem. Unfortunately, though, identifying a problem does not
mean a solution has been found.

The real problem lies is in corporate will. A company is not a person,
and cannot care as a person does, and yet we tend to think of a company
as having a consciousness. It does not. It has management and staff, most
of whom have only a small say in running the company. Yet the people who
write the instructions and warnings on product labels have little or no
say in what they do or how they do it.

If the key device in the effort to protect innocent bystanders is what
is written on the pack, as I believe it is, then you would think the person
who wrote it would have authority and a reasonable budget, being responsible
for maybe the only link the manufacturer has with the user. Not so. And
it was this which led me away from the industry and into freelance labelling
consultancy.

I am cynical enough to know that ultimately it will be pressure from
the tabloid press or television which will force upon industry plain-speaking,
easy-to-read instructions which can and will be followed. But that need
not be. Corporate will (influenced by individuals within the company) could
decide to appoint experts to write product labels. But first, individuals
have to realise the problem exists. If you can find the person who can make
a decision, then tell them they can make changes because they want to, rather
than have to.

The problem is not restricted to pesticides. Agrochemicals are only
one group of products among many where there is poor communication between
manufacturer and consumer. Not all have life-threatening connotations, but
they can be annoying. Which brings me to the bone I have to pick with the
makers of Shredded Wheat – or rather the person who writes the pack.

No sooner have I started collecting tokens for a free gift than a different
free gift appears with different tokens. I worked out I would have to eat
two Shredded Wheats a day for three months before I had collected enough.
I can’t buy several packets, because the packs are not airtight, and besides,
I like other cereals. And I don’t see why I should take the alternative
of paying in cash. It was supposed to be a free offer, after all. If the
situation wasn’t so trivial I would write to the company and complain.

They could well have lost a customer. Why? Because the person who wrote
the words on the packet did not think very carefully about what they were
doing.

You can’t teach common sense. You can teach logic. People who write
product pack information or instructions have to be able to foresee the
effects of what they write in advance, not wait until someone complains.
Or worse, until someone is disabled by a product applied incorrectly. I
learnt how to do it. So can others.

Tony Holkham is a freelance labelling consultant.