THE RULE OF THE ROAD.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16960, 8 October 1920, Page 7

THE RULE OF THE ROAD.

l-O THE EDITOR OF "THE PItESS. ,, Sir,—ln his letter in your issue of to-day vour correspondent "Be .In Time," "has fallen into a very common error. He says "The street belongs as much to the one as to the other, and the passenger can romain as long on tho highway as he pleases, so long as he keeps to his proper side." There is no "proper side*' on tho roadway for a foot passenger, though few people, motorists especially, seem to know it. A year or two ago a motorist ran over a foot passenger in "Wellington. In a Court case over the matter the motorist in defence, said* tho man was on his' wrong eidc. The Magistrate promptly pulled him up, saying, ''There is no rignt or wronc sido of tho road for a foot passenger/' That, I take it, is tho law. But hero is the silly part of the business so far as cities and towne are concerned. On the footpath one is told to keep to the right. If the rule of the road has to do observed by thoi same individual, he or she on crossing over the side-channel, and continuing in the same direction as formerly, must keep to the left. If there is ground of complaint on the part of motorists that so many people are—to the motorists —walking on the wrong side of the road, it is duo to tho way they are taught to walk on the footpath. Having been brought up m the country and accustomed to keeping to the left, it took some years to get out of this habit on the footpath when I went to livo in Christchurch; in fact, I continued to make a mistake sometimes. If the same rule were observed on the footpath as on tho road, people would get into the way of going in the same direction on one side or the road as motor-cars and other vehicles, and there should Ikj less risk of accidents, evon if the old law that tho pedestrian has the first right to the road on either side still remained in existence. Xo matter how one looks at it, however, tho onus of avoiding accident lies mainly with the driver of a car, for if the person walking observes tho rule of the road, he has his back to whatever is coming up behind him. That ia the main point against a foot passenger observing tho same rule of the road as a vehicle, and probably that is the reason why the old law allows him to walk as he pleases on the road. —Yours, etc., PEDESTRIAN. October 6th.