The Press FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1954. Roads and Safety

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27593, 25 February 1955, Page 10

The Press FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1954. Roads and Safety

Engineers, as a profession, are bound to take a close interest in the related problems of road construction and traffic safety; and the annual conference of the New Zealand Institution of Engineers this week usefully provided the opportunity for the varied viewpoints within the profession to be presented and considered. These ranged from the belief that motorists (or a large number of them) are fools and will get killed or injured, no matter how skilfully the motorcar manufacturer and the highway engineer may plan for their safety, to the conviction that scientificallydesigned highways would permit cars to cruise at 100 miles an hour and 60-ton commercial vehicles to travel at 70 miles an hour without danger to anyone. Rightly, a good deal of attention was paid to the principles of sound road design and construction; and it is as evident to the general public as it is to engineers that this country has a long way to go before ideal road conditions for fhodern motor vehicles are the rule rather than the exception. There is a limit to the money that can be voted and the physical resources that can be applied to the improvement of the country’s roads, although both are being found more speedily and more readily under the roading administration introduced by the present Government.

It is very tempting, in the meantime, to offer the shortcomings of the roads as a kind of scapegoat for the country’s unnecessarily high accident rate. The four speakers at the engineers’ conference all did something to discourage this tendency by emphasising that, regardless of the engineering standards of the roads, the “ human factor ” is the chief cause of accidents. Other countries have been inclined to lose sight of this truth. The “ Manchester

“ Guardian ’’/remarking recently on the inclination in Britain to blame high accident rates on bad roads, said it was “ a sad reality ” that road improvements did not always bring a reduction in the casualty lists.. On the contrary, beautifully designed and constructed roads often invite high speeds and carelessness that can be more productive of accidents than the hazards of indifferent roads which at least require drivers to keep their attention firmly on their

business. The “ Manchester “ Guardian ” quoted a British

authority, Dr. A. L. .Goodhart, as blaming the continued slaughter on the roads on a kind of public fatalism “ which seems to accept that “the motor vehicle is a killer and “that nothing much can be done “about it”.

Somehow [said the paper] we must learn to live with our roads more successfully than we do. An enginedriver or the pilot of an aircraft would not think of having half a dozen drinks before going on duty. Driving a car may often demand more intense concentration than driving a train or piloting an aeroplane, yet men and women by the hundred think nothing of driving home by car from a convivial evening. And when they are involved in accidents and ths police prosecute, the sympathies of juries are nearly always with the “unfortunate" motorist. . . . Selfishness that would rouse public indignation and bring imprisonment for neglecting children at home may be punished by a fine of a few pounds if it kills a child on the road. Our road values are distorted and the most urgent of all tasks in promoting safer roads is to encourage —and, where necessary, to enforce—respect on the roads for the normal values of life.

That is a reasonably accurate diagnosis of the traffic ills of New Zealand no less than of Britain; and the cure is the same.