BEWARE OF GIVING LIFTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 410, 20 December 1932, Page 7

BEWARE OF GIVING LIFTS

® It takes a hard heatt to ignore the raised right hand and appealing glance of the travel-stained foot-sloggei*, but the sympathetic motorist must be on his guard if he would avoid the risk oP personal injury and loss, or at least the encouragement of a growing nuisance; for the regular lift-giver of to-day finds as much danger as romance, and as many oaths as thanks for his trouble. This spring there are scores of honest men, pathetic cases of the disease of unemployment, tramping the highways in search of work; it is a pleasure, and often an education, to help such folk along their way. But there is another side of the picture says a writer in an exchange. I have unpleasant memories of a drive with a shifty-eyed coup-le, sitting well forward on the back seat, waiting, I felt sure, for an opportunity afforded by a lonely stretch of road to land - me one on the back of my head, pick my pockets, and disappear over the hedge. There is the grouser who compares his lot'wtih that of his host for the first few minutes and continues to beg for money until he is asked to get out; and "a rapidly increasing number of clever fellows who make a habit of travelling, for business or pleasure, by means of a series of lifts. Bince one hasty glance cannot possibly differentiate between a rogue and an honest man, it should be the firm principle of a lady driver never to pull up at a sign from a stray pedestrian — unless, of course, he is a policeman. The following rules may be useful for men: — (a) Never put a tramp in the back seat. (b) Ask him where he wants to go before disclosing your own' destination. This helps to eliminate the man who is ready to go with you anywhere for his own ulterior motive.