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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.
is a British comics artist and writer who also works in the fields of editorial illustration, graphic design, font design and children's books. His work is graphic and playful but is unusual for its high degree of formal experimentation. His graphic story "End of the Line" first appeared to much praise in The Brighton Book, a mixed media anthology in association with The Brighton Festival. He is co-editor of Nelson, a collective graphic novel with 54 creators, published by Blank Slate.
See also Dominic Lutyens' profile of the author in Design Week and the British Council's Contemporary Writers site.
Every so often a book like this comes along, one which allows fresh vision, even a change of mindset. Brilliant...Rumble Strip is a crucial revelation.
Brilliant. Angry, articulate, bewildered, and beautifully drawn; a visceral blast of truth-telling against the cult of the road. They should be giving it away with new driving licences.
For a graphic work that doesn’t show a single human being, this is an extraordinarily human book. Its ideas and questions about how the car impacts on your life will echo in your mind long after you’ve finished reading it, whether you’re a driver, or a pedestrian, or both.
One utterly original work of genius. It should be made mandatory reading for everyone, everywhere.
In thrall to the vivid iconography of the roadside – the signs, the arrows, the unfolding motorway landscape – and vividly sketches the ways car can isolate us from each other.
I love your book. I think it's a really interesting take on ‘the road’...wonderfully controversial...phenomenal and very original.
A darkly dazzling graphic book...a disturbing indictment of the culture of the car presented in a simple, shocking and brilliant way.
A gripping narrative – he just presents the hard facts and they stay imprinted on your mind.
Congratulations to Woodrow Phoenix for making such a difficult subject readable and entertaining in a thought provoking way. Once you start reading, you can't stop turning the pages...This is an emotional horror story told with a perfect symbiosis of text and image.
This is a timely, well researched and fascinating novel and one which Jeremy Clarkson would probably hate. Surely yet another reason for getting out there and buying a copy...
Compulsory reading for people who carp on about rising fuel prices, lack of parking and how cyclists are the scum of the earth.
