SHE SAYS ...

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33774, 21 February 1975, Page 4

SHE SAYS ...

I have heard it said that quite a few vehicles which have been running about Christchurch roads for years, and look like going on for years more, wouldn’t last a" week on the hilly roads of other cities, and I am inclined to think there is more than a little truth in it. It is also true that some of the newer vehicles about the city would need more maintenance than they seem to get now if they were running on hills regularly. There is a very steep private road just near our house, and the number of small dramas played out on its slopes in the last few years is quite remarkable. Sometimes it is a case of strange drivers who do not know much about coping with hills, try to get up in - third gear, stall, then either run into trouble reversing down, or fill the air with smoke from their car’s burning clutch as they try to restart.

But more often it is trade vehicles that come to grief. Usually the driver takes the hill too cheaply, stalls, then finds that the handbrake will not hold. The last one found his firm’s ill-tuned van could not get up with a heavy trailer, which got all sideways across the road when the vehicle started to I run back. When the men ! tried to unhitch the traileri and move it themselves on | the slope, it took off — as could have been expected — and vanished over the edge of the road into the undergrowth. The van's handbrake wbuld not hold, it did not have the power to haul the trailer back on the road.j and things were quite I exciting for a while. On other occasions i trucks on the road have had brake failures of! various sorts, up till now, I

managing to escape disaster by inches, and more by luck than management. Frankly, it makes me wonder just how many trucks and vans are running about the city with faulty brakes. On the evidence I have seen on this road, quite a few. But I wonder about the standard of the drivers, too. Mostly those who have had trouble have been warned in advance about the nature of the road, but either think thev know better, or else don’t know how to cope with it. There is no need to be frightened of driving on steep roads but" they do call for some respect and caution. And that applies whether you are driving a car or a truck.