NO MORE ROAD HOGS?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 314, 27 March 1928, Page 16

NO MORE ROAD HOGS?

SPEED-CHECKING DEVICE AUCKLANDER’S INVENTION Motorists in general and local bodies and firms owning motor-vehicles will be Interested in a speed-regulating invention which has been patented by Mr. H. D. ChatSeld, of Auckland. Unfortunately for the New Zealand motorist the condition and width of the Dominion’s roads are making speed restrictions necessary, though the tendency in many other countries, and particularly in America, where the roads are wide and good, is to place as few restrictions on speed as possible. Mr. Chatfield has invented an attachment by which the maximum road speed of a motor-vehicle may be limited to anything from five miles an hour to the limit of which the vehicle is capable. The attachment is worked from the speedometer. The effect is that at the maxnmum speed fixed—say 30 miles an hour—the magneto is automatically disconnected and it does not matter how much petrol is given the engine the speed cannot be increased. On the maximum speed being reached, and the cut-out operating, the driver is warned both by the checking of the engine, as is usual in the case of mis-firing plugs, and by the familiar sound of back-firing caused by the car immediately decreasing pace and allowing the magneto to function again and explode the accumulated petrol vapour. A car fitted with the attachment adjusted to limit the speed to 27 miles an hour was demonstrated to The Sun this morning, and certainly did all that the inventor claimed. Unless the Government or local bodies decide to make some such attachment compulsory the private motorist will probably not go to the expense of fitting it, but it is likely to be favourably received by owners of fleets of motor-vehicles who prefer to know that they are not being driven above a reasonable speed. A number of those who use motor-bus transport would probably view favourably the attachment of this instrument to those buses which are known often to exceed not only 30 milqs an hour but 40.