DEVIATION DANGER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 953, 22 April 1930, Page 11

DEVIATION DANGER

TWO CARS GO OVER BANK TROUBLE AT SLIPPERY PATCH Two cars went over the bank at the top of the Bombay deviation on the Great South Road last evening, through skidding on a patch of unrnetalled clay. Though one car was a fullyladen saloon, and the other a roadster carrying three people, nobody was badly hurt. The rain during the week-end, coupled with the subsequent traffic, improved the general surface of the deviation, smoothing out the corrugations of the surface and laying the dust which has been so troublesome for some time past. At one point, however, water did not drain awav from the road, and by last evening the surface had become so greasy that cars became almost unmanageable. The danger was greatest to cars approaching from the South, as they were on the outside edge, and the mere application of the brakes was sufficient to throw them off the road. A fence twenty or thirty feet down the bank brought up both the cars that went over, and neither was greatly damaged. The owner of the second car and a farmer belonging to the neighbourhood stood guard at the spot most of last night, swinging lanterns to warn drivers of the danger. Traffic on the Great South Road last evening was exceptionally heavv, particularly between 7 o'clock and 9 when the highway between Auckland and Hamilton was lit by the lights of an endless procession of cars returning southward after the races at Ellerslie.