SAFETY ON THE ROADS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 283, 27 August 1935, Page 8

SAFETY ON THE ROADS

With almost £6OOO already subscribed by motoring interests, the North Island and South Island Motor Unions have committed themselves to a long-term educative campaign to make the roads of New Zealand safer. It is proposed to map out a course of action extending over seven or ten years, and costing in the aggregate £17,000, toward which total the Government is to be asked for a subsidy in the proportion of £5 to £1: that is, nearly £60,000 in all. Some difficulty may be experienced in carrying out this part of the plan: but the case for a liberal State subsidy is doubly strong. The Government is seldom asked to help in a cause of more pressing urgency, or one promising greater benefits to the people as a whole; although the motorists make this request, it is made as much in the interests of the non-motoring as of the motoring population. Moreover, the special taxation to which motorists submitted—for their own purposes—in more prosperous times, has been in large part diverted since to general use. Although £60,000 by itself seems a large amount, it will not be large when spread over seven or ten years, and it is nowhere near as much as the Main Highways Fund has contributed through the depression to strengthen the Consolidated Revenue. Both on grounds of public policy and of simple justice between themselves and the Government, therefore, the motoring organisations have a strong claim to assistance in the public-spirited enterprise upon which they have embarked.