The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1st, 1939 PREVALENCE OF ROAD ACCIDENTS.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 57, 1 September 1939, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER Ist, 1939 PREVALENCE OF ROAD ACCIDENTS.

A valuable section of the annual reports of the Transport Department is that devoted to road' safety. The summary of the year's work in publicity, propaganda, and adult education is a little bare; more attention than is given 'in a single note might have been paid to the report in the House of the Lords Committee on Road Reform Proposals; and it would be useful to have, as a record of the New Zealand Road Safety Council's work, something fuller than a list of the problems considered, by the council. But the pages that follow supply in statistical tables, diagrams, and explanatory comment a remarkable range of analysed and arranged data; and they make it very plain that the dangers of the road remain great, not because: of facts or factors unknown but because too many road users will not heed known facts and obvious rules drawn from them. This is, of course, no new observation. But the most important truth about traffic problem is that it is a grave one almost entirely because obvious (and easy) lessons are not learned or defied, and that it will be solved by concentration on the obvious. This stands out in certain figures. Of 4383 analysed road accidents of various types, the cause of 3951 lay in some fault or failure of the motorist, cyclist or pedestrian; only 432 were attributable to a-mechanical fault, to this condition of the road or to bad weather. Of 992 accidents involving cyclists and motor vehicles, no fewer than 666 (all that are assigned to a definite cause) were, due to such faults as failure to yield to the right of way, inattentive riding or driving, failure to hold; to the correct side of the road', negligent passing, and so on. Of 879 accidents involving pedestrians and motor vehicles, 698 are definitely .attributable to faults of a similar sort; and driver's inattention, or failure to give way at a set crossing, or failure to hold to the correct side, and the pedestrian's carelessness in crossing .the road, or in stepping out on to it or from another vehicle or object, and 1 so on. Easily the commonest error of motorists is failure to yield to right of way. Failure to keep to the left, at corners, on bends and elsewhere, stands second, inattention next, and excessive speed only fourth It can hardly be* disputed that, necessary as other measures are, persistent and! strenuous effort to make the road user learn and obey the simple rules of the road is most necesary and the most likely to bring down .the injury and fatality figures. No safety code is fool-proof; but the fool who least suspects and is correspondingly dangerous i 6 the one who lets what he calls his common sense tell him when he should follow the code and when it; is "safe" to ignore it. The code itself is the common sense of the road, and safety lies within it, not in and' out of it. As the Transport Department's statistics show, pedestrians are the most careless class of road users. Cyclists have been given that ' dishonour; but the figures. disallow it. Of 992 accidents involving motor vehicles and cyclists, the motorists are judged to have been mainly responsible for 46 per cent, cyclists for 53 per cent. Of 879 accidents involving ped'estrians, the main fault was the motorist's in 29 per cent, the pedestrian's in 71. To this total the pedestrian's fault at crossings, authorised and other, contributed 676 accidents, 36 of t'hem fatal. The temptation to blunder into death ought not to be irresistible.