ERECTION OF SIGNS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 18, 16 October 1933, Page 11

ERECTION OF SIGNS

Automobile Club Activity During the past year the work of erecting and maintaining warning signs has been maintained, says the annual report of the Wellington Automobile Club. "The executive acknowledges with due appreciation the subsidy obtained from the Main Highways Board toward this class of work,” states the report. "Only roads of secondary importance now remain to be posted. A suggestion made at the last annual general meeting that signs should indicate the mileage to the most important towns was adopted, and most of the main road signs now embody this information. Warning signs, erected not only in the club’s own territory but throughout the whole island, make travelling very much safer—that automobile club warnings prevent accidents cannot be disputed—and in addition the direction signs are such that the motorist takes little or no risk of losing direction when" travelling. “The success of warning signs, the committee suggests, is due largely to their discriminate use. There are many localities where requests have been made for signs where the executive has considered them unnecessary. No doubt it is possible to induce drivers to take extreme care at a particular spot by the use of a sufficiently Intimidating array of signs, but over-emphasis cannot fail to weaken the effect of standard signs and on the whole cause motor accidents rather than prevent them. A similar result must follow from the use of warning signs at places where they are not justified. “An accident which is due merely to bad driving affords no evidence of the need for a warning sign. The St. Andrew's cross signs at the railway level crossing between Wellington and Levin have been repainted and rewritten by the club. Reference to railway crossing signs prompts the executive to remark that it is extremely doubtful if any good purpose is served by the ‘Compulsory Stop’ signs erected at crossings in various narts of the Dominion. The more discriminate placement of these signs, the design of which is hot, in other parts of the world, regarded as the most effective, should give bettef results, as few, if any, motorists, acknowledge them. The Wellington City Council has accepted an offer made by the executive to erect, directional signs in the city. The work has just been put In hand, and the erection of those signs will meet a long-felt want.