Eight Deaths On Roads

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30274, 29 October 1963, Page 14

Eight Deaths On Roads

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, October 28. Labour week«end will go down in road death statistics as the blackest for at least 10 years.

Two men died in motor accidents this afternoon to bring the number of deaths to eight—the highest since 1953, when eight also died.

At least seven other road accident victims were seriously ill in hospital, a Transport Department spokesman said tonight. For statistical purposes the weekend ends at 8 a.m. tomorrow.

A middle-aged man was killed on the Main North road, Auckland, about a mile and a half north of the Dairy Flat school this afternoon when a truck overturned and crashed off the road. The dead man was Hendrikus Anthonlus Hendriks, aged 34, single, of Trinidad street. Blockhouse Bay. He was a passenger. Three other people were injured and were taken to the North Shore hospital. Two were treated and discharged and one was admitted to the Auckland Hospital

The other death today was at a level crossing near Seacliff.

A Southland motorist stopped by a traffic officer

had been travelling at 40 miles an hour while reading a newspaper folded on the steering wheel. Another driver, also in the Invercargill area, was found towing a car in heavy race traffic with a 40ft tow rope. A driver, whose car went through a fence beside the State highway a mile from Huntly at 4 p.m. on Saturday, said he had had no sleep since the previous Thursday. Three cars racing on the Bulls - Taihape highway reached speeds of 92 miles an hour. A Transport Department spokesman in Wellington said today these incidents had been reported by traffic officers checking Labour weekend road traffic. So far traffic officers have issued 970 tickets and warned another 958 drivers. The Traffic Superintendent for New Zealand (Mr J. C. C. Edwards) said: “Generally, weather and driving conditions have favoured the motorist, but we have still had accidents caused in many cases by a simple Lack of care and common sense.”