Crime On The Roads

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30856, 15 September 1965, Page 16

Crime On The Roads

Sir,—By raising or abolishing the speed limit on the open road it seems to me that the lunatic fringe of the motoring world (say 10 per cent of drivers) would have extra scope for their destructive activities, and with their deficiency of judgment would wrap their cars round telephone poles, plunge over bridges or charge through patches of ice with more abandon than they do now. This could well increase the dangers of motoring for everyone. Nobody can say in our leisurely economy, that “time is money,” nor would Mussolini’s indifferent comment when his car ran over and killed a child, “what is the value of one life compared with the business of the State” find an echo here. The urge to travel fast can only be attributable to vanity or boredom and should, not, I think, be encouraged.—Yours, etc., I.S.T. September 13, 1965. Sir, —We read that the Waiwera County Council disapproves of the existing speed limits, one of the members going so far as to assert that he derives no pleasure at all from “pottering along at 55 m.p.h. on an open road.” Certainly, there are main roads hereabouts that are dead straight, flat and featureless; but it is a poor compliment to the passing panorama of the New Zealand countryside if nobody thinks it worth while loitering, or even stopping, now and then, to enjoy it. Indeed, to be perpetually dashing from place to place in passionate pursuit of the car in front—which is about what it amounts to in many cases—seems the very negation of intelligent travel.—Yours, etc., ILAM. September 13, 1965.