MOTOR SPEED LIMIT

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 285, 1 September 1942, Page 4

MOTOR SPEED LIMIT

Enforcement Of 40 m.p.h. Restriction PROSECUTIONS PENDING At 2 o'clock’ in the morning there is little traffic on the Hutt Road, and the fine highway would tempt any motorist to apply a little more pressure to the accelerator. A driver who succumbs to that temptation these nights, however, is likely to discover to his surprise that he is not alone on the road, and that his fellow traveller is a traffic inspector on the look-out for vehicles exceeding the recently-im-posed statutory speed limit of 40 miles an hour. Patrols are now maintained on all roads at all hours of the night and day. There was an earnest purpose in imposing the sliced limit, to conserve petrol and tyres, and the authorities are seeing to it that this purpose is not being left at the issuing of regulations. At a time when many other staffs are being cut lower than had been believed possible, the Transport Department is taking on more inspectors, so that the roads may he patrolled more thoroughly. The department has extended its operations, and the inspectors are concentrating on the speed and the lights of vehicles,’ both these factors being governed by wartime legislation. One of the Transport Department’s traffic inspectors in the Wellington district said yesterday that the public response to the regulations had been very good, though there was always the occasional driver who thought he could do what he liked. He said that all the inspectors used their discretion as to whom they gave a ticket to for exceeding 40 miles an hour, because sometimes there was a justifiable excuse. He quoted the instance of a man who was running his ear on substitute fuel, and had to accelerate fairly hard while he changed over from petrol to the substitute. New Zealand servicemen and visiting servicemen driving service vehicles are subject to the new speed limit, and the inspectors pull them up in the same manner as they do any other motorist. Six prosecutions are pending for breaches of the 40 miles an hour regulation on the Hutt Road. This number covers about a fortnight’s patrolling, as during the first week the regulations were in force the inspectors contented themselves with warning offenders, and all the tickets are not yet in for the last week in August. There are 16 prosecutions pending in the North Island, but none have yet been set in motion in the South Island. The Transport Department attributes this to a little leniency on the part of the inspectors in the South Island, but they have now been circularized that the regulations must he enforced stringently. The tyre shortage is closely linked with the 40 miles an hour regulation, and the department, announces that a progressive tightening up of the enforcement of the regulation is to take place.