“P” Preferred To “L”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31093, 23 June 1966, Page 5

“P” Preferred To “L”

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 21. The head of an Auckland Driving school, Mr R. N. McCallum, believes that newly-licensed drivers, who under new traffic regulations are probationer drivers for two years, should display the letter “P” instead of “L” on the backs of their cars during the probationary period.

Today Mr McCallum won the support of the Auckland Metropolitan Road Safety Council for his view. Mr McCallum, a testing examiner of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, told the Road Safety Council in a letter that the “L” sign requirement was unfair. “It will brand all new drivers with ‘L for learner,’ will make them conspicuous, and could possibly make them nervous because they know that the driver behind them is expecting them to make a mistake because they are ‘learners’,” wrote Mr McCallum. Probationary drivers were not learners, but licensed

drivers, properly tested by a written test on the road code and by a practical driving test, h e said. And the new regulations did not require, as many thinking motorists had advocated for years, that a person learning to drive should display an “L” plate so that other motorists could take aYtra carp He advocated that an “L” sign be made compulsory for any person behind the wheel of a car while learning to drive. The council decided to refer Mr McCallum’s letter to the Commissioner of Transport, expressing its support of his proposals.