CHECKING ROAD SPEEDS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 85, 27 April 1937, Page 8

CHECKING ROAD SPEEDS

New Italian Invention Tested WILL REDUCE ACCIDENTS Father Alfani, Director of the Florence Observatory, has invented an instrument for registering the speed of motor-cars which has given good results under test and is expected to prove very useful. When accidents occur on the roads, it is not always easy to show whether the responsibility lies with the car driver or the pedestrian. So far there has never been an instrument which actually registers the speed at which a motor-car is moving. There is, of coprso, the speedometer, but this sliows speed only momentarily to the driver. Father Alfani' s instrument is intended to register speed so that it can be verified afterwards when the car has Jtopped. Its action is simple ; a needle perforates a strip of paper contained in a box, and, as the strip revolves according to the speed of the car, there is a fixed relationship between the space left between any two perforations and the car's speed. A strip will last fpr about 750 miles. Generally the driver of a car pays too little attention to the speedometer. Father Aifani has conceived the idea of a signal, a sort of small semaphore in various colours, which lights . up when the car reaches certain speeds, and is visible to both the driver and the traffic controller. Such a device, it is claimed, can he of use to drivers, pedestrfans, police, and magistrates. It will help to preveiit accidents, and it will relieve the prudent driver yf responsibility by proving that at the time of an accident he was driving at a safo speed.