INVERCARGILL MOTOR CLUB.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 41, 24 December 1920, Page 10

INVERCARGILL MOTOR CLUB.

AIMS AND OBJECTS. Lately there has been a good deal of talk about the benefits to be derived from a Motor Club. As a Club has just recently been formed in Invercargill a few instances of what has been accomplished by sister clubs will be of interest to all those who have the weifare of mot-oring at heart. In order not to get too fax from our own centre let us quote what the Otago Club has done not only for its own members but for every user of the road. In scores of places where roads were bad or nretal put on a road and left unblindea the Club has been instrumental in inducing the County or Borough Council concerned to rectify matteirs. In some cases working bees were formed " by club members to assist in the work and monetary aid often forthcoming where the borough did not feel justified in spending allocations on one paticular part of a road. Throughout Otago sign posts have been erected and warning signs on dangerous corners. Bridges and culverts have been erected on the recommendation of the Club and a hundred and one things which go to make motoring a real pleasure have been aocomplished. There is plenty of room for improvements in Southland and if we are to maintain our progressive policy we must have a body which is alive to the needs of the community and able to point the way. We trust the Southland Motor Club will fill the bill in this respeet. There has never before been such a need for motorists to stand shoulder to shoulder as there is at the present time. Next session of Parliament legislation is to be brought down taxing motors. No reasonable motorist objects to a tax if the money derived therefrom is to be expended on the roads. \ arious suggestions have been made as to the form this tax should take; one suggestion is on the h.p. of the car. This is manifestly unfair, as one man who has a high powered car may only use it a few days a week, and another man who has a lowpowered car may use the car (and the road) every day and night and only pay half the tax the first man does. It ^ the opinion of northern motor clubs that the only fair tax is a tyre tax. This not only gets at the man who uses the roads a great deal but it gets the fast and reckless driver who while fast driving damages the road and wears his tyres out quicker. This form of tax would be very easy to collect through the Customs. 7 Unless motorists unite they will have no say in the matter, so it behoxes every motorist in Southland to jon^ and as a collective body "bell the legis ® tors what form of taxation should 3 levied