SAFER ROADS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 32, 1 November 1929, Page 13

SAFER ROADS

Sir, —The recent fatality on Whiteman's Road should be a steady reminder to the local body concerned, and also to the engineers of the Public Works Department, that we have now in the process of growth a large section of the public who own motor-cars, but whose experience of driving them is confined to week-end tours off the beaten tracks of our main highways. ■ The only way to minimise these accidents will be to declare narrow by-roads open to one-way traffic only, until public pressure compels our local bodies and engineers to increase the working width of the roads around all corners to a minimum of 40ft. and provide the outside edge of all roads in hilly country with a legal wire fence. The fence should not be erected below the road, but on the edge of it, and no wooden rails should be allowed without the usual five rows of fencing wire. • . c ■ If the traffic warrants the widening ot the whole length of the road, it could be done, but for the present the suggestion of widening all the corners to take twoway traffic should be made the policy ot our local bodies. The Public Works Department should make this a standard practice in all new road construction. It might also be suggested that there should be no uphill grade on that part of the road going around a corner. This is to avoid accidents caused by fast downhill traffic trying to turn the corner and swerving off the road, with the usual tosuits of a fatality, as every public holiday now seems to provi I f^j^p O a 1 "i S T.” October 30. 1929.