Safety on the Roads

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 770, 23 April 1954, Page 15

Safety on the Roads

"THROUGHOUT the civilised world road traffic is staking a grim claim as No. 1 killer of mankind. So serious has the problem become that traffic police in Indiana, .U.S.A., were recently authorised to shoot at dangerous drivers. President Eisenhower has stated that more Americans haye been killed on the roads in 50 years than in all the wars in which the U.S. has engaged. In Britain, the total service and civilian casualties of World War II were fewer than the road casualties in the first six years of peace. The World Health Organisation reports that New Zealand is sixth from the top of the list of fatal traffic accidents on q population basis. Last year the toll on New Zealand roads was 312 killed, 40 more than the previous year. In the first months of this year the toll has risen to an all-time high of more than one death a day. The work being done to reduce the peril on New Zealand’s roads forms the basis of an NZBS documentary programme to be broadcast by Commercial stations on Sunday, April 25. Entitled More Deadly Than War, it tells of the three E’s-Engineering, Education and Enforcement-on which traffic authorities base their campaign. But in the last analysis, the programme points out, road safety depends on the individual’s attitude. In an appeal to New Zealanders to make May and June-the worst months for accidents-the best this year, the Minister of Transport, W. S.

Goosman, says: "We have got to get rid of the fatalistic view that the price of Progress is more injuries, more death on the roads, more grief in our homes.

We must show a little more regard for our own lives and safety, and for everyone else’s." More Deadly Than War plays on Sunday, April 25, from 1ZB at 6.0 p.m., 2ZA at 6.30 p.m., and 2, 3 and 4ZB at 8.30 p.m.