Roads no place for beds

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 22

Roads no place for beds

Wellington reporter Beds, baths, and other strange objects used as stunts for charity on the roads, are causing increased concern to the roading authorities. The Ministry of Transport and the National Roads Board will cooperate in investigating their legal status — if any — on the roads. The National Roads Board was considering an application, from the Salvation Army, to push a bed from Ashburton to Christ-

church during the South Pacific Television Telethon appeal, and another case of a bed being pushed from Lower Hutt to Wellington recently. In the meantime, it looks as if beds and baths do not qualify as vehicles and so do not need any licence, or perhaps even anyone's permission, to be on the road. “They do not qualify as vehicles, hut are simply objects of the roadways or verges and accompanied by a number of pedestrians," said a spokesman for the

Ministry of Transport (Mr M. W. Croy). It was not so much the original pushers that worried the Ministry, as the hordes of followers they attracted and the hazards the combination presented to vehicular traffic. “We do not want to be seen as killjoys putting on a blanket prohibition." he said. “But they ought to be kept down in numbers where possible, and banned at night.” No specific law applied to people pushing baths, heds. or other items along

the roads. Any controls applying to them would be the same as applied to processions or demonstrations. The Automobile Associations are opposed to such stunts, on the grounds that the highways were not built for such a purpose; they were as inappropriate and dangerous as a moving car on a footpath. “These gimmicky things are just plain foolish, no matter how worthy the original cause,” said Mr F. R. M. Parkinson, representing the associations.