The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1905. MOTOR MANIACS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12644, 3 November 1905, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1905. MOTOR MANIACS.

It is only recently that the sound of the motor ibas been heard in our land, but the sound is growing louder and louder, and, judging by present appearances, the motor will soon be a very common eighifc t»n out roads and streets. While it is very pleasing to see the introduction of the latest mechanical „ wonders, it is well that the authorities should keep a watchful eye on enthusiast* lest peradventure motorists allowed their enthusiasm to leiad them to recklessness. At the last meeting of fche Borough Council a councillor casually remarked, when speaking of motor-cars, that there were bye-laws governing them and their use. Whether he had any reason for making this observation need not be inquired into. At Home at the present time, judging by the press, the motorist is a menace to the safety of the people. In London last year there were over two thousand accidents from motor-cars and motor cycles. Every week or so the public is horrified .by some particularly coldblooded catastrophe, euoh as the recent Mar'kgate tragedy. Mothers living near a high road are in a state of nervous apprehension every time their youngsters go out to play. Cycling "on the .main roads, has become more hazardous than Alpine climbing. Apart from the possibility of aotuail collisions, the cyclist must have nerves of triple brass to stand witlßdut a tremor, the sudden " toottoot " and the thunderous roar of the sixty horse-power road locomotive behind 'him. For the common pedestrian aill the joy of the open road has. vanished. He cannot now re-echo Walt Whitman's optimistic line—" I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like! " Choked with dust, his nostrils assailed by foul smells, and his ears by discordant hootings, he must take his walks abroad elsewhere than on the King's highway. The public highway is fast becoming the rich man's monopoly. Not only are fche roads greatly diamaged, but the crops by the roadside suffer. Suburban gardens and the suburban housewife's windfow curtains all tell the same tale. But the trodden worm is turning at last. The rural county councils are awaking to a sense of their powers. A conference of rural and district councils, held at Crowe recently, adopted 'resolutions in favour offurther limiting the epeed of motors in populous districts, and also for taxing them in. proportion to their horse-power, so as. to provide some kind of fund for extra road maintenance and repair.- Lord Windsor, the First- Commissioner of Works, has excluded motors from Hyde, Park during the afternoons. A London paper, criticising his action, contends that " only an abnormally sensitive nose can be offended >by the effluvium from a properly driven petrol car, while remaining unaffected by the smell of horse traffic." If this be so, says another paper, most noses must be abnormally sensitive. Water-carts spraying eau-de-co'logne i nthe wake of the petrol car might make the effluvium more bearable. The Motor-Oar Act was passed in 1903, and so great has the grievance become that a Government inquiry into its working is already promised. A few weeks ago a neiv Motor-Car Bill, intro duced in the House of Commons, was read a second time by 222 votes to 58. It proposes to give magistrates poa or to infliot a fine of twenty pounds, or one month's imprisonment, for a first offence, and to make the present regulations more stringent in several ways. By the Act of 1903 no motor-car nun.it ■be driven at a greater speed than twenty miles an hour, with a reduced speed in particular localities. It is common knowledge, says a Home paper, that this speed is exceeded evcy day. Some loo.il authorities have oauc^jt of fenders here and there by stationing plain-clothes officers with sto-pwafch<s along the high roads; but it is ditfi-.-alfc to oortvict, and for one " road-a )g " collared there are a score rusluug jrf^^ at express speed. Five miles au^Hr should be the limit in any town suburb, or v.i Mage. Really, the high-power cars require special (roads to rheni.soivo.slong, broad, unfrequented, ■ highways like tlhe great national road of France. Tinder any conditions they must be unsafe on our narrow anil crowded roads It would certainly be wisest- to allow .no car of over twenty-four horse-powor to be driven on English highway*." We do not tliink that charges such as we have referred to above can be -tevoMed at New Zealand -motorists as a whole ■but we fear that there are some wh.> require very little ciicour^onio'i', ( 0 'become motor maniacs.