CHECKING SPEED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 538, 23 May 1933, Page 2

CHECKING SPEED

CHASING BY INSPECTORS • PRACTICE. HIGHLY DANGEROUS From . time to time newspaper reports of prosecutions against motorists for speeding indicate that the traffic inspector' pursued the alleged offender in a motor car or on a motor cycle. As the inspector would probably be concealed behind a hedge or in a gateway when the offending car passed, the inspector would probably have to travel at a speed of 25 per cent to 30 per cent greater than that of the driver he considered it necessary to proseeute in order to overtake him. Motorists have long considered this method of estimating speed liable to grave inaccuracies, and now from a responsibl'e local body comes an expression of opinion which brands the practice as highly dangerous. The following article, which is self-ex-planatory, appeared in an Auckland P'aper recently:— " 'They must cbase them,' said another member. 'They don't need to'was the rejoinder. 'They can take their numbers.' A third councillor recarked that inspectors who chased motorists at high speeds not only endangered their own lives, but the lives of the general public'. The amended Motor Regulations impose a speed limit on gravel roads of 40 m.p.h. This speed is imposed as a temporary measure in an endeavonr to protect the road surfaces. The funds which in the past have been available for the maintenance of roads have been subject to such serious depletion through the Government diverting huge sum of motorists' money to the Consolidated Fund that there is no sufficient money in the Main Highways Board's accounts adequately to maintain roads which have been constructed. ;R,ightly or wrongly — and all engineers are by no means agreed on this point — it is maintained that the speed of private motor cars is affecting the gravelled or non-dustless type of roads. It has therefore been agreed that temporarily travelling shall be limited to a speed restriction on roads of this nature, and motorists are duly warned that if they travel in excess of the 40 m.p.h. limit on roads not surfaced with bitumen, tar or concrete, they will be liable to prosecution. The Minister of Transport has accepted a recommendation from the motoring organisations that clay and

pumice roads shall also be exempt from the 40 m.p.h. restriction. This has not yet been gazetted^ and it is feared that there may be some departmental objection, and further representations are heing made to the Minister.