NEW PARIS BY-LAW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 96, 24 April 1928, Page 19

NEW PARIS BY-LAW.

PROTECTION FOR THE PTIBLIC.

SPLASH-PROOF WHEELS.

Fashionable Farisiennes may now patter along the narrow sidewalks of their city's winding streets without fear of having their chic gowns splashed by passing automobiles. Recently the police prefect issued an edict obliging owners of motor vehicles weighing more than 3000 kilograms to provide their cars with mud protectors. The police have orders to arrest drivers failing to comply with this regulation, and pedestrians whose clothes are spoiled by mud splashed over them by passing cars may claim heavy damages. Paris is the first European city to make mud protectors on motor vehicles obligatory. In its narrow streets passing automobiles frequently deluge with mud and water from the gutters not only passers-by, but fruit and vegetable stalls.

The police have not specified any particular kind of mud protector. The result is that trucks with all sorts of devices are now racing through the streets. The best protectors hang from the hub in the form of rubber brushes. Others consist of a ruber flange projecting slightly from the tyre rim. The latter have been in use for many years on the Paris buses, where they have proved fairly successful. eAt present the police are fully occupied testing the infinite variety of splash guards called into existence by the prefect's order, amid great excitement in the automotive world, and to the vast amusement of the "protected" public. Splash-proof devices have been compulsory in Japan for some years.