Conversion Of Vehicles

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 34, 2 April 1948, Page 5

Conversion Of Vehicles

Made Easy By Careless Owners, Says Inspector Mr K. R. McD. Sharpe, Transport Department Traffic Inspector at Whakatane, considers people here make vehicle conversion very easy. He told the Beacon about it the other day. It seems citizens will leave the keys in their cars, and leave the doors unlocked. Naturally, all the enterprising thief has to do, if he has the nerve, is to step in, start up, and drive away as though he owns the vehicle. Mr Sharpe took a walk along the street on Wednesdaj' - and counted 60 cars that could have been taken like that. His dramatic drive after a converted truck is still fresh in the public mind. Last Saturday night another vehicle was “borrowed.” A light truck, it had been left by its owner outside the Jtheatre while he and his wife went to the pictures. She told him he’d better lock it. But he was an Aucklander. Nobody in this country village would dare purloin a city man’s bus. Dash it, the thing just couldn’t happen! . But it did. And Mr Sharpe had to get out of bed in the wee sma’ hoors to look for the truck.-It was recovered, abandoned but undamaged, near the Domain. The speedo showed it had travelled 25 miles. Mr Sharpe says he wants all motorists to take that sort of incident as a warning to themselves and to take all possible precautions against a thing that is by no means uncommon here.