Modes and Motors

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 208, 22 November 1927, Page 10

Modes and Motors

AUCKLAND TRAFFIC PROBLEMS City Licenses 13,700 Drivers WHEN the orange-and-blaek numberplates are discarded next March from the motor-vehicles of the Dominion, traffic authorities fervently hope that the succeeding colourscheme will offer a greater degree of visibility. One Auckland authority believes that, in the interests of closer control, plain black and white should be made the standard combination.

jyjOTOR regulations introduced in ward elaborate number : plates, designed to gratify the fancy of owners who had an eye to decorative effect. There followed the green and white plate, then the black and white, or “magpie” effect, and next the wasplike colour scheme for the current year. Police and traffic inspectors concur in the belief that these last colours make numbers difficult to read at any distance. Many speed-fiends,

they say, have escaped into oblivion through the aid of this camouflage conferred by a kindly Government. For themselves, the traffic officials would prefer black on white alternating with white on black. Otherwise there will be reached the time when suitable colour-combinations are at the point of exhaustion. Startling tints may then be introduced by despairing authorities. TRACING OFFENDERS Another plea from the wracked heart of the traffic policeman is for a system making identification easier. Formerly cars could be traced in short order from the lettering on the num-ber-plate. Now the process is a great deal more cumbersome. Traffic regulation, and the control of motors and motorists, have grown to startling dimensions in recent years. Every city has its traffic force. Auckland’s municipal traffic department controls a well-organised corps of inspectors and policemen, and deals weekly with scores of applications for authorities and licences. Only this year the staggering tally of 13,700 drivers’ licences has been issued by the Auckland City Council. In addition at least 400 applications have been rejected.

The figure suggests that a surprisj ingly large percentage of the city's people must now be qualified to drive cars. It Is far from all-embracing, as many candidates apply to outlying local bodies, whereof the tests are usually less exacting than the trial to which applicants in the city are submitted. Acknowledged to be one of the hardest tests applied in New Zealand, the Auckland city trial course takes the aspiring charioteer from the Town Hall across Queen Street, into Victoria Street by way of Lome and Rutland Streets, and through the narrow alleys in the vicinity of the courthouse. Turning, reversing, and parking tests, as well as an oral questionairre, are In the prescribed examination. Having passed it, the driver can display with pardonable pride a licence that has been thoroughly earned. Time has changed since the days when any incompetent could take the wheel of a motor-car, and be liable to no reproach from the law. but there are still Inconsistencies arising from the fact that no standard test is applied. Any local body has authority to issue licences, and some ask only the most cursory evidence of proficiency. One local body possessed an inspector who could not drive, but he nevertheless took pride in discerning faults among the uninitiated, and enjoyed his daily joy-rides until a lady passenger, resenting certain withering comment, invited him to take the wheel himself on the return journey. He couldn’t, and had to walk home. Caution, on the contrary, was the watchword of an inspector for a local body in the vicinity of Auckland. Rather than trust himself with the untried, this gentleman conducted the tests from his office steps. PROFICIENT AND OTHERWISE

Under a system which permits these conditions it is inevitable that a percentage of drivers benefits from easy tests. Motor salesmen, clinching a deal, offer tuition in driving as a stock bait, and in their own interests they know of places where even a clumsy, nervous or unpractised driver can “get by” with luck. The result is the occasional motorist who stalls his engine at a street crossing, or releases the wheel, in a panic, when an accident is imminent. If such a driver—it is often a lady—possesses an Auckland City licence, the inference is that she had steeled her nerves the day that she earned her ticket. Stalling, bad reversing, and bad starting on hills are the most frequent causes of rejection by the city inspectors. There is occasionally an instance when a nervous candidate crashes blithely into a lamppost or a tram. Dozens, Including many paralysed by the importance of the occasion, have failed to pass the turning test, conducted near the courthouse, and have rammed the wall skirting Albert Park. Others disqualify themselves at the outset by cheerfully stopping on the wrong side of the road when they call at the traffic office. Such indiscretions are almost exclusively the prerogative of the gentler sex. Sixteen hundred ladies, nevertheless, have been granted city licences this year.