DRIVE SAFELY!

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 304, 23 December 1940, Page 6

DRIVE SAFELY!

Petrol restrictions will have their effect upon holiday traffic this year, but in spitte of them the highway.* will carry an enormously increased volume of traffic this week and next. That traffic will take its toll, but the toll 13 not inevitable. It could be avoided altogether by exercise of a complete adherence to the rules of the road, with the addition of a restraint on the part of drivers, a recognition that it is better to arrive at their destination a few minutes later than the speed limitations of the car will allow than to finish up in a hospital bed. If drivers will remember to give way to the car on the right, to give way to everything when changing direction, to , slow down at intersections, even when there is no apparent need to keep the speed down, so that they can stop within v half the distance visible ahead, to take curves on their own side of the road, to overtake only when they can see that' there is ample room and time, and to signal their every intention to turn, slow down or stop, the Christmas will be a merrier one for scores of . people than if the rules of the road are forgotten. The slower driver gets more miles out of his petrol rat-ion than does his tearaway two-and-three-quarter-hours-to-Rotorua friendly enemy, and he gets more comfort and infinitely greater safety on the way. If every driver is imbued with a full sense of the enormous potentialities for destruction hidden under the bonnet of his car, and is determined that those powpra shall not be unleashed, the roll of death and injury this year will not, as it too often has at Christmas read like a casualty list.