โ Scribed by Geoffrey Grime
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In 1947 he was appointed to the Road Research Laboratory of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research as Deputy Director in charge of the newly-formed Traffic and Safety Division, and he remained in that post until 1%5. During that time, the Division increased greatly in size and scope, until when he left the Laboratory in 1%5, he was in charge of about 180 scientists, and nearly half the resources of an establishment employing upwards of 600 people. The work of the Division covered all the areas of road safety and traffic recognised as important, and the Laboratory was probably unique in conducting research on so many aspects of safety, trafhc and road construction under one roof; research benefitted by the cross fertilisation of ideas, and the Traffic and Safety Division became internationally recognised as the leading scientific authority in many of the areas covered by its researches.
The success of the Division during that period was due in large measure to the vigorous direction of research and the personal contribution of Dr. Smeed, whose insight and immense energy inspired his colleagues to produce work of high quality; and nothing which did not satisfy his standards of scientific accuracy was allowed to be published. His forthright intellectual honesty was an example to his staff and inspired confidence in the scientific integrity of the Laboratory.
For the last 10 years (196676), spent as Professor of Traffic Studies at University College London, Prof. Smeed continued to make important contributions both to road safety research and to traffic research. Under his leadership the UCL Traffic Studies Group became a leading transport research centre, with many postgraduate students.
He published over 90 papers, most of which described his own researches. In the field of traffic, to which I shall only make brief reference, since this obituary is mainly concerned with his work in safety, he wrote extensively on the space requirements for traffic in towns, the road capacity of city centres, urban road networks, and urban design in general, but he also made important contributions in many other areas of traffic research. His conclusions on much of this work were summarised in his inaugural lecture "Traffic studies and urban congestion",
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES