MOTOR NOTES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 109, 1 February 1935, Page 15

MOTOR NOTES

Road Safety at Night THINGS YET TO BE DONE

(By

Headlight.)

Improvements are continually being made in the main roads of New Zealand so that their safety at night is increased, but there yet remain practices which are highly dangerous, though they eould easily be avoided. The chief of these is the ignoring of the good habit of driving to the left of white lights and to the right of red lights. The elimination of sharp corners and the construction of no bends of less radius than a certain standard, and the placing of white posts and other objects along the edge? of black roads at bends, are typical of the things which have been done for the safety of /motorists at night. The use of a four-wheeled vehicle with only one headlight, so that it might be mistaken for a motor-cycle, and insufficient width of the road allowed for it, has been prevented by a regulation which thus recognises that a driver cannot see into the gloom which surrounds bright lights, but there is nothing (except common sense) to prevent a driver pulling up on the right-hand side of the road at night. When a car with blazing headlights is stopped on its right-hand side of the road, there may be nothing to prevent traveller in the opposite direction, presuming that it is travelling slowly on its correct side, driving to the left of the white lights, as usual, and so blundering off the road, especially if he dims. There is some danger, although it is not nearly so serious, that a car approaching the rear of the one on the wrong side of the road may tend to drive to the right of its red tall light. The danger of a car pulling up in this position is not likely to be realised by it driver until he has mer one.

The Wellington City Council sometimes recognises the significance red lights have to drivers at night by placing red hurricane lanterns on obstructions which it is intended should be kept on the left, and white lanterns on obstructions which should be kept on the right. However, the authorities could go further. Recently the fence in the Kalwarra Gorge was painted white in places, and patches of white paint were put on the rocks. They are a help in indicating the side of the road at night, but they would be of even greater value if they consisted of two different types of paint—one for the left side of the road and the other for the right (say, stripes for the left and white patches for the right). The bends are so sharp that a driver unfamiliar with the road might drive to the left of a white patch on a rock, thinking it was on the right side of the road, and that the gloom of the bush was the black road in front of him, and so plunge into the bush at the side of the road. It may be replied to this that drivers should be- more careful and not travel in suc'h a manner that they cannot see clearly where they are going with their own headlights, but that reply denies the usefulness of the white posts and painted rocks w’hich are such a help on the busy main l roads.