LEVEL CROSSING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 344, 4 October 1932, Page 2

LEVEL CROSSING

ENGLISH INYESTIGATIONS INTO iNCIDENCE GF ACCIDENTS. NOT INCREASING. "The existence of a railway crossing ovef a public road must obviously create some restriction on freedom, of movement along that foa^," writes Mr. A. Newlands, C.B.E., in Modern Tr^nsp'ort . (Englarid) . |'Ip,Ahe; early 3ays of.railwa^s this restriction . was ,not of the same moment as it Is to-day, owing to the more leisurely manner. In which. the pedestrians and horse-drawn trafiie of thcse days moved along the roads, as compafed with the speeds at which modern motor vehicles traverse the same routes to-day. • "A check of five minutes at a level crossing on a hqrse-drawn vehicl^, moving at a 10 m.p.h. only repnesented the, time. spent in trayelling about 8,00 yards, whereas it might represent to- . day in the cost. of a motor- driven vefiicle thie time spent in travelling a distance of four or five miles. "D'ue to this change in the speed of traffic on roads, the incidence of accidents at' railway crossings has entirely changed, for the reason that niuch more care is called for in approaching railway crossings at the high speeds of to-day than was necessary at the former low speeds. "In Great B.ritain, aceidents at railway level crossings which involve loss of life on injury have by law to be reported to the Minister of Transport, and the oi.'inion expressea in a report presented by the Minister to Parliament entitled 'Aceidents which occurfed on the railways of Great Britain during the year 1930,' is that in spite of the intensive charaeter of presentday road traffic, an examination of the statistics of aceidents and casualti'as at public road level crossings justifics the conclusion that danger to the public from the existence of crossings is not on the inerease. "inoi' does it appear that tfie number of aceidents, where caualties occur without fatalities or personal inj.uries resulting is on the inerease, the number in 1930 being 23, of which 19 were at crossings provided with gates and four at crossings without gates, whereas the corresponding figures for 1929 were 30 — 26 at crossings provided with gates and four at crossings without gates respectively. "The question of the responsibility for such aceidents has also beep ipquirad into, and it has been aseertained that in 1930 four of the aceidents were attributable to breaches of the regulations on the part of railway servants, involving 11 persons* being injured, while 19 aceidents were due o want of care o'n • the part of the public, involving /II peraons being killed and 13 injured.