MOTORDOM

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 540, 18 December 1928, Page 7

MOTORDOM

By

WARNING TO MOTORISTS THE LEVEL-CROSSING DANGER, It is inevitable that the coming lioli- j day season will usher in a new crop ( of level-crossing accidents. This is a danger for which touring motorists should be constantly on the lookout. The railway regulations require that .he whistle of a locomotive shall be sounded 300 yards before entering a crossing. If the train is travelling at 45 miles an hour, this gives nearly 14 seconds' warning. The legal position •egarding the responsibility for crossing collisions is clearly stated in the following decision of a New Zealand udge: "Prime facie, and in the absence f special circumstances of justifica ion, a man who enters on a level crossng in front of an approaching train, tnd is there run down by it, must himelf have been guilty of failure to use due care for his own safety. To look and listen is. in all ordinary cases, an effective precaution against such an accident, and it is the duty of all persons before entering on a railway crossng to look and listen accordingly, and by reducing speed or otherwise to place themselves in such a situation that they can look and listen effectively. ’ A NENV ZEALAND RECORD | 1 i fpi-IE number of new motor - * cars registered during | ; the month of November last j amounted to 2,237, which con- j stitutes a record for New | Zealand. Only once previ- j ously has the 2,000 mark been j exceeded, and that was in De- ! cember. 1925. when 2,134 cars ! were registered. MIGHT BAN HORNS The chief of the Paris police is of the opinion that hooting and honking add to loss of life, and he is seriously considering the banning of all automobile horns within the city limits. It is stated that most accidents take place at street corners where drivers sound horns, but do not slow up sufficiently to avoid collisions with other cars whose drivers act likewise.

"HEADLIGHT"

“Tents Better” Melbourne Motorists Prefer Camps to Hotels With the arrival of the summer camping season, the following article trom a recent issue of the Melbourne '‘Herald’’ should prove of interest to Auckland motorists. “Members of the Licensing Board during a recent tour were struck by the tact that large numbers of holiday motorists preter tents to hotels ana oouruing-nouses. The motorist, of course, is wise in his generation. In most cases he tried the hotel nrst. Visitors have often remaraea upon the casual manner in which we do some things. Bucli people have probably been touring the country, because the manner in which the average rural hotel has risen to the demands made upon it in recent years could not by any stretch of imagination be called adequate. It cannot be denied that there has been some improvement, but it has not kept pace with the ever-in-creasing demand which the motor-car has created. “The Licensing Board noted particularly the crowded condition of hotels and boarding-houses at some of the popular resorts. Such places reap a harvest at holiday times, and very often give a poor equivalent fur what they are paid. People in holiday mood are amazingly tolerant and will put up with almost anything. Their tolerance is traded on, and guests are crammed into all available spaces, regardless of the fact that the general accommodation of the house is thus severely overtaxed. The dining-rooms are too small, the bedrooms are often hutches, and the meals may be badly served in relays. “Small wonder then that the motor tourist buys a tent and a billy-can and prefers them to anything else. Tent life, it is being discovered, .has compensations of which the average city dweller is ignorant. When the knowledge is acquired, the providers of poor accommodation in the country suffer. In one rural resort during recent holidays a tract of land set apart by the municipality as a camping ground housed over a hundred cars and their occupants, and water and sanitation were provided for a small fee. If hotels and boarding-houses had kept up with the tunes, all these people might have been accommodated indoors.