MISADVENTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 306, 26 December 1936, Page 6

MISADVENTURE.

YEAR'S ACCIDENTS.

AUCKLAND AND DOMINION.

hoad safety campaign.

Year- by year the highways and byways take' their toll. Speed and more speed has seemed to be the goal ever since the motor appeared, and it may be that the road-user's desire for speed has developed too greatly in proportion to his capacity to control adequately the fleet thing which he guide= over streets and highways. Bluntly, the Minister of Transport, the Hon. E. Semple, has indicted those motorists who attempt things beyond their capacity. He Jias declared war on the hit-and-run driver, the speed-hog and the drunken driver. The reckless driver, he said just recently, had without doubt been the highway slaughtermail in New Zealand. Excessive speed had resulted in the deaths of 330 persons in the past seven years, out oi a total road toll of 1000. Thousands more were injured. Mr. Semple is leading with no little success the Government's crusade for safety on the road. Although he admitted the new policy would take a long time before its full effect was produced, a marked improvement can already be seen. The records show that during September, October and November the number of lives lost througn road accidents numbered 2G, as compared with 42 during the same months of last year. The total for this year will probably be under 200. Road and Crossing. Auckland has had a liberal share of road accidents this year. Drivers, passengers and pedestrians have been killed and maimed. The first shocking tragedy of the year occurred on January ?, when a car was torn to pieces as it crashed into a telegraph pole near Cox's Creek, and a 13-year-old boy suffered extensive and fatal injuries. An orchardist was killed when his truck hit a pole in the city in the same month. One clay in April three motor cycles returning from Muriwai were involved in a collision, six people being injured. In June a woman and her adult daughter were both killed when they were hit by a car at New Lynn. Accidents such as these make the figures mount quickly. Up to Christmas Eve there had been 29 level crossing smashes in New Zealand. From these accidents 17 deaths were recorded, and there were many cases of injuries. The accidents were at the following places: —January: Palmerston North; Dunedin (Presbyterian minister killed); Gore (young man killed, two children injured and baby miraculously escaped). February: Fendalton crossing, Christcliurch; Westfield. March: Waitangi, Napier (two men killed, three injured); St. George's Road, Avondale; Ohinewai (young man killed); Auckland; Woolston. May: Christchurch (cyclist killed); Addington, near Christchurch; Inglewood. June: Waipahi, near Gore (married woman killed). July: Morrinsville; Bunnythorpe crossing, Palmerston North (elderly couple killed); Normanby Road, Auckland; Addington, near Christchurch (motorist killed); Langdon's Road, Christchurch (radio inspector killed); Allanton, Otago (truck driver killed); Falsgrave Street, Christchurch. August: Nelson. September: Koutu, near Rotorita. November: Elisor's Road, Christchurch; Sockburn crossing, Christchurch (truck driver killed); Warrington, Dunedin. December: West Street, Palmerston North (married woman killed, husband and child injured); Tweed Street, Invercargill (one man killed, another died later); Woodward Road, Mount Albert (boy killed). Other accidents have involved the railways. Unauthorised use of the track by pedestrians has led to several deaths and serious injury. Accidents to trains themselves have -been mainly minor derailments, but a passenger was fatally injured and four others hurt when the Auckland-Wellington express struck a slip near Paraparaumu on August 30. Eight passengers were injured when the Mamari, one "of the rail cars running on the Wairarapa line, was blown off the rails by a severe north-west gale on October S. Aviation Fatalities. Three aviation fatalities occurred. The first was on February 19, when a private charter taxi monoplane struck the anemometer mast at Rongotai aerodrome, Wellington, during heavy rain. The noted pilot, Squadron-Leader M. C. McGregor, was fatally injured. Later in the month, Flight-Lieutenant G. M. Owens, of Auckland, received fatal injuries to the head in a crash at Wigram, Chrii'.tchureh. In March, before the eyes of thousands, Flight-Lieutenant J. (" Scotty") Fraser, New Zealand's foremost parachutist, fell 1500 ft to his death in the waters of Lyall Bay, Wellington, during the McGregor Appeal air pageant. His parachute failed to open. No one was seriously hurt in two forced landings made during December. Sixteen thousand people saw Putt Mossman, American trick motor cyclist, run over his wife Helen at Western Springs when the ramp used in one of his " stunts " collapsed. Mrs. Mossman suffered a fractured pelvis. This was "one of the unusual accidents of the year. A tragedy which caused a wave of horror throughout the Dominion occurred on January 27, when three men, a woman, and a bov of 7 were drowned at Weymouth, on the Manukau Harbour. A IG-'year-okl girl rescued two boys. After the terrific gale which swept the country on February 1 and 2 it was reported that eight were dead and two missing. In June a sensation was caused in Auckland by an explosion at the Mount Eden ammunition factory, when a girl was killed and a man and four girls injured. Electrocution Cases. A Wanganui man was burnt to death in his shack in January, and in the same month a woman who was stung on the back of her neck by a bee while motoring near Invercargill died within an hour. An eight-year-old boy fell from a wattle tree and was empaled on a broken-off sapling, which passed through his neck. In August a man who was trapped in a freezer hacked at the wall for two hours with a meat hook until he was heard and rescued. His labour luckily kept him warm. Two employees were burnt in a fire in a Christchurch fireworks factory the day before Guy Fawkes Day. An Auckland boy grasped a radio earthwire and was electrocuted, and the same form of death was met by a young farmer when the guy wire of a stacking pole fouled a high voltage wire. In one week recently two farmers, one at Oamaru and the other in the North, were fatally gored by bulls.