Road Accidents

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21978, 30 December 1936, Page 8

Road Accidents

The total of road accidents in the Dominion during the Christmas holidays was lamentably high; but the Minister for Transport is far too impetuous in declaring that " these tragedies " prove beyond all doubt that we have not yet "gone far enough" in legislative precaution.

The mere fact that during a very short and abnormal period the accident rate has risen abnormally proves nothing about the condition of the law; and it can prove nothing about anything else, for that matter, until the circumstances and causes of each accident are fully explored. If the Minister holds that, under perfect traffic laws, no accident could occur, he is pursuing a false perfection. There might, for example, be no accidents at all—there could hardly be serious ones—if all traffic were limited to five miles an hour, if keepers were stationed at all cross-roads, if all roads were for one-way traffic only, and if motoring, like flying, were suspended in bad weather; but it would be cheaper to give up motor transport than to pay this price for safety. It must be realised that the best possible traffic laws can only be relatively effective. Combinations of circumstance will always occur to set the stage for accidents; and no matter how clearly action is dictated by the highway code, road-users w,ill not always act, instantaneously, as the highway code expects of them. Mr Scrapie should be more gratified by the evidence of weeks that his labour for safety has been useful than upset by the evidence that, in spite of it, a great many accidents can still occur in a few hours. He says, in his statement on the subject, that he is " determined to tighten up the law further, par"ticularly the section relating to driving tests"; and he asserts, as he reasonably may, that " a " large number of people now on the roads are "unfitted to drive." What Mr Semple's proposals are, of course, is not known. It is sufficient to say that they should not, if extremes are to be avoided, be framed in the haste of the Minister's present judgment. As for driving tests in particular, though these may be improved and better managed, there is less hope of advance from this direction than might be thought. Drivers may successfully pass exacting tests for a license, yet fail when tested, less severely but in different conditions, on the road. The ideal procedure is to prevent unfit drivers from being licensed; until this procedure is completely and scientifically methodised, the problem is to pick out the unfit drivers, as they show themselves under the tests of the road, and get them off it.