THE WEAKNESS OF WOOD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 139, 14 June 1935, Page 6

THE WEAKNESS OF WOOD.

(To the Editor.)

The photograph in Tuesday's "Star" depictin"- a motor car which crashed through a bridge in° Canterbury, and somersaulted into the river, is only another reminder oi tho letters I wrote a few years ago, expressing amazement that the authorities continue to place any reliance whatever on wooden railings. A few days after one of my letters appeared, suggesting that wooden and even concrete railings are merely deceptive death traps, for they snap like a carrot at the impact of a car, whereas a car could not break a wire fence constructed at a mere fraction of the cost, a striking illustration of this contention occurred. Almost at the same hour two local body engineers happened to be involved ifl motor accidents. The one near Wanganui crashed through some wooden bridge railings and was imprisoned in his car and drowned. One in Otago left the road in a cloud of dust thrown up by cars in front of him, and came to a standstill after brushing through some scrub. When the dust disappeared 'he found himself suspended over a river, his car supported by a wire fence so old that a post or two had snapped—rather fortunately, as it happened—but the rusty wires had held. The suggestion that a wire fence to a bridge or a 'dangerous embankment is infinitely safer than wood or concrete is not my invention, tho idea being given to me by a farmer. Asking why his fencing posts were so far apart, tho wires in the long, intervening spaces being stapled to little "battens that did not_ even touch tho ground, ho explained that if the posts were close together, and the wires strained tight, they would snap like, twine at tho impact of a wild bullock, whereas the "give" of a long panel with tho moderately loose wires stapled to swinging battens would throw back the wildest beast, most likely without hurting it. Every picture of the dozens of motor accidents that the "Star" has since published seems to prove his contention that no serious damage would have resulted if the fence had been wire. SAFETY FIRST.