THE COMING VEHICLE. Motor Cars and their Speed.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 116, 20 September 1902, Page 8

THE COMING VEHICLE. Motor Cars and their Speed.

PROMPT measures have been taken to render harmless the fiery untamed motor car that threatens to come to Wellington to make busses and tram cars of no effect. Budding Roosevelts, who want to come from Newtown under the two minutes, will have to be careful, for the speed at which you may drhe has been left to the decision of the man in blue. He and the motor car inspector (when he is appointed) will, perhaps, differ as to what may be deemed a " reasonable " speed, and it would be just as well to get the police in training for purposes of pursuit. • • * A policeman going at the rate of sixty miles an hour paced by a motor will be a thrilling spectacle. But then, of course, the policemen will be served out with motor bikes, telescopes, and electric search lights, so that they may ascertain the number of your motor. Footballing policemen and sporting constables generally will be the friends of the motorist, and you may depend that anything up to Koosevelt speed will be reasonable to them. It will be the corpulent sergeant, scant of breath, who is in the sere and yellow leaf, who will hate to see you buzzing along at 20 miles an hour. • * • You noticed how the bolder members of the House, many of whom love a fast break-neck "split" on a blood horse, thought that 40 miles an hour down Willis Street was reasonable, and how others saw in their mind's eye a motor accident hospital built on the new land in the Newtown Hospital ground. The suggestion that although 40 miles an hour would be too great for a town, but would be slow enough for country roads, is distinctly quaint. We are imagining a motor race from Kaiwarra to the Hutt and back again within the hour. • ♦ « Will there be a disposition for local bodies to make the motor crawl, so that they shall not interfere with the borough-owned traffic ? There may be a disposition on the part of local bodies to get something to cope in point of speed and con\enience with the air-shod vehicles, and we feel that it won't hurt, even in Wellington. • * * The motor car makes light of a bad road. It could not trifle with an execrable road, however, such as the Hutt road, for instance, and a man does not want a three or four hundred pound vehicle jolted to pieces The discontented cyclist has not been able to persuade the powers that be that better roads are wanted. The discontented cyclist is a person who earns anything from £1 a week to £5, and his voice is small. The motor owner's

voice and purse will be larger, and he will certainly want a maximum of comfort. Indeed a second Vaile may yefc arise with a Motor Roads Bill, and Mr. George Fowlds may stand a better chance with it than he did with the Cycle Roads Bill of blessed memory. • • • The uneasy feeling that prompts you to let the other fellow try first, as in the case of the Kelburne tramway, will, of course, be prominent for awhile, but when the novelty has died away, and horses are curiosities, and everybody is getting a motor on time payment, even the pessimists who speak of a motor accident hospital may be persuaded to view the institution with favour.