Speed blamed for road toll

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33381, 13 November 1973, Page 3

Speed blamed for road toll

(New Zealand Press Association) HAMILTON, November 12. New Zealand’s road toll should be given top priority by the Government, said the Mayor of Hamilton (Mr M. J. Minogue) today.

i Speed should become : “public enemy No 1,” he ■ said. The Minister of Transport (Sir Basil Arthur) i should immediately direct • traffic officers to concentrate [ their attention on speeding i offences. The Mayor was commenting on the accident on Friday night in which six persons died—described as ■ the worst in Hamilton’s hisI tory. Calling for a reduction of ; the open-road speed limit to ; 50 m.p.h., Mr Minogue said the mounting toll of death and injury “seems to evoke : little apparent sense of out- ■ rage in a country prepared ■ to get highly emotional s about issues such as sport-

ing ties with South Africa and nuclear testing. “They involve speculative issues. The road toll is tangible, not something happening thousands of miles away.” He said he would express his own “sense of outrage” at meetings of the Municipal Association executive and National Roads Boards later this month. “I’m certain speed is the chief killer. What is needed is a return to strict enforcement of a 50 m.p.h. limit with rigid disqualification penalties for breaches. “The courts have got to! be put in a position where they’re not called on to make quite so many concessions,” he said. “There is indifference to death on the roads, which reflects in full measure a political immaturity and! contradictory values. “The fact that 600 die on our roads every year should evoke shock and dismay, and determination to do something about it.” If a civil disaster killed this number of people, it would warrant emergency measures. The same attitude should be applied to the road toll. The road toll should lead to a questioning of reading improvements, he said. Roads—and one of the “horror stretches” was the Auckland motorway—were designed for increasing speed. “The chances of death and injury must increase with these so-called improvements,” he said. “The road toll seems to have been almost accepted. But I feel a sense of outrage, not only for the innocent people who suffer, but to social and political sensibilities.”