WHERE OPINIONS DIFFER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 930, 25 March 1930, Page 8

WHERE OPINIONS DIFFER

A SUMMARY published yesterday of conclusions reached by the Royal Commission of Transport in Britain shows interesting divergences of opinion between ideals of traffic control there and in New Zealand. In Britain, by an extraordinary anomaly, it is even possible for a blind man to obtain a driving-licence. It is highly improbable that a blind man would ever want one, but this extreme is possible in the absence of any test of physical fitness. While agreeing that this is wrong, the commission does not endorse the advantage of tests of driving ability. When all is said and done, the school of all drivers is on the road. It has yet to he shown that the New Zealand system of tests has diminished road accidents. The novice driver usually exercises far more care and caution than the experienced hand, and consequently is a negligible cause of trouble. Though New Zealand law requires the novice driver to pass a test of proficiency, in some parts of the country this test is purely nominal, if demanded at all. Some tests are easier than others, and all sorts of anomalies thus arise. There is a great deal to be said for the broad view of the British commission that, where hard and fast regulations can possibly be dispensed with, they are better left alone. This is seen in the apparently drastic recommendation that there should be no speed-limit, motorists having freedom to drive at any pace not deemed dangerous to other users of the road. This contrasts sharply with the attitude of many New Zealand local bodies that a car should never in any circumstances be driven over 30 miles an hour, and possibly it holds a lesson for the Piako County Council, whose members have been complaining bitterly because the Auckland Automobile Association, though merely carrying out its declared and legitimate policy of always assisting its members when they are in trouble—whether the trouble is a puncture or a charge of speeding—recently challenged the loose and irregular methods on which the council brought forward a charge of speeding. On New Zealand roads it is very doubtful if the removal of the speed restrictions altogether is advisable. The deplorable condition of the Great South Road south of Papakura, for instance, makes speeds above 40 miles an hour over that section of the road extremely dangerous. But generally speaking the improvements in the stability and braking powers of the modern car justify a broader view of the motorist’s -quite legitimate desire to hurry on the open road. Another respect in which the views of the British commission oppose New Zealand practice is the suggestion that dipping or swivelling headlights should be made compulsory. In New Zealand it is now against the law to dim or switch the lights, but the new idea seems just as dangerous as the old.