The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1927. PEDESTRIANS AND MOTORISTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 201, 14 November 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1927. PEDESTRIANS AND MOTORISTS

AiS the vast majority of people in New Zealand still have to walk and only the minority rides, the latest proposed State regulations for the national control of motor traffic are really of more interest to the pedestrian than to the motorist. It may be assumed that the average pedestrian will appreciate the Public Works Department’s implied recognition of his rights to reasonably safe use of city streets and country roads, and may even feel grateful for the organised effort at safeguarding him against grievous injury or sudden death. There is much need of a national system of better and more rigorous control of motor vehicle traffic. The present system, as administered by over three hundred local bodies throughout the Dominion, is so varied and haphazard in respect of rules and regulations as to be ineffective as affording a dependable check on motoring accidents and a relatively high mortality rate. In Auckland alone one person is killed by a motor-vehicle every week, while about twenty others are injured. This, if compared with American and British motoring fatalities—the total in Great Britain this year is expected to be not less than four thousand—may not be an appalling toll, but it is bad enough to demand very serious consideration. Moreover, the 'maiming and slaughter of pedestrians, to say nothing about the motorists who drive over embankments and precipices or collide with other vehicles, tend to increase as motoring becomes even more popular. The departmental draft of a national system of motor control regulations is not by any means perfect, but it is at least headed in the right direction and represents a marked advance on the proposals from the same source quite two years ago. Like the Government and other administrators, the Public Works Department naively confesses to some imperfection and appeals for kindly constructive criticism. Since the draft regulations arc so good in themselves motorists and, it is to be hoped, those local bodies whose duties include responsibility for the protection of pedestrians, should hasten in goodwill to assist the department in bringing the new scheme of control to perfection. It is not necessary to raise the bogy of State intei’ference with the rights of municipalities in the administration of local government. That kind of foolishness will appeal only to the parish pump type of administrator. It is to the advantage of local bodies to secure a uniform system of motor traffic control. The rules of the road should be the same everywhere throughout the country, so that the pedestrian, as well as the motorist, would know, or at least would have no reasonable excuse for not knowing, the regulations concerning speed limits, safety precautions and the penalties for breaches of the law. It is probably true that the cause of motoring accidents is due more to bad or careless driving and inadequate brakes than to motorists’ love of excessive speed. The proposed regulations are deficient in this respect; they ought to go farther in enforcing a higher standard of motor driving. In too many instances a driver’s licence is too easily acquired.