PARKING PROBLEM
SHOP FROM THE SEAT. DRIVE IN ANDi GO THROUGH. Americans particularly in. t-lue South and, West, need not leave their cars for meals. .Restaurants provide “kerbside” service. Just halt by the roadside or drive into the private car park and at once a waitress in at elbow with the menu. The tray she brings clamps easily to the door of the cay. The meal over, just sound the horn and the tray is removed, money taken, and off goes tjje car. Very niae, too. In places shopping can be done from the car. In California, in particular, there are large establishments selling groceries, .vegetables, and fruit on the drive-in principle. You shop just as you Avould purchase petrol. Even banks have begun to accept deposits in this fashion, keeping a clerk standing beside the door and prohibiting cars from stopping for any other purpose.
It all comes, of course, from parking congestion. There are grocery stores where tine customer actually drives into the establishment and helps himself. A store, of this type is arranged in the form of the letter “U” with its open ends to the street, “way in” and “way out,” one-way traffic. The driver does not have to steer. A system of slots in the pavement takes control and with first speed engaged the car goes through, the driver having both nands free to take goods from the shelves as lie passes along. The packages are all ready made up. At the door, of course, is a cashier, who checks up the purchases and receives jiayment. So the parking problem is solved. Not always, however, the traffic problem. Jams may occur through a customer being slow, undecided. or with too large an order to till. In some towns shops are restricting themselves to two-storey premises. A ramp leads to the roof, and the roof is a private car park. You drive up, park the car, and shop at leisure. If this spreads to city environs, a big change may eventuate in down-town shopping centres. NIGHT SPEEDING. A GREAT DANGER. The director of the American Roadbuilders’ Association, Mr C. M. Upham, noting that statistics show that since 1930 night traffic fatalities have increased 40 per cent., whereas daylight fatalities show a decrease of 3 per cent., attributes the position to the development of the motor vehicle itself Their rapidity “has catapulted the higlnvay-user beyond the security he used to enjoy within the range of his headlights at a slower speed and in la less powerful vehicle.” This is a point that many drivers overlook. Motor vehicles to-day are capable of such speed that it is easy—quite unawares—to drive at a speed beyond one’s ability to stop in the clear distance ahead, let alone the half part of it. Until the problem of highway lighting is solved there can be no safety in speeding at night, either for those in the car or the unfortunates without it. MILITARY AUTOMOBILES. PRODUCTION IN JAPAN. A Japanese dispatch to the American “Machinist” indicates that 70 per cent, of all military automobiles now used in China are JapaneseJjuilt, whereas two years ago the output by Japanese plants was not sufficient to supply 20 per cent, of the peace-time needs of the army. The programme for this year, it is said, calls for 50,000 cars. With the standard, passenger and commercial civ fipld in Japan still largely monopolised by American ptants, the Japanese have concentrated on the production of sub-standard or “baby” chassis for passenger cars and trucks which are suited to local conditions. Keen interest is maintained in Diesel automobiles, due to the fact that Japan depends for more than 90 per cent, of its liquid fuel supply on sources outside her empire. In addition to four firms producing Diesel cars —at prices too high for the ordinary market —recent announcements of smaller and less costly Diesel types are causing developments to be followed. BONNET “ BLACK-OUT.” CAUSE OF ACCIDENTS. • Another potential cause oi accidents on the loads lias been created by the new type of car bonnet which opens from the front. An English motoring writer tells bow lie saw an incident that- might, have easily ended in disaster. “An American car was coming toward me when suddenly its bonnet, which was of this type, rose in the a.r he writes. “The driver, although bis view suffered in consequence ol what was equivalent to a. road black-out, managed to keep the ear straight, while he pulled up. “Curiosity impelled me to do the same. 1 found that he had stopped a few hundred yards away to get oil and had left, it to the garage attendant to clamp down the bonnet.”
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Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 295, 24 September 1938, Page 5
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780PARKING PROBLEM Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 295, 24 September 1938, Page 5
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