MOTORDOM

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 150, 20 March 1936, Page 15

MOTORDOM

by

Chassis

SEDATE, SANE AND SAFE MOTOR TRAFFIC

A Sunday Idle Along Hutt Road and Beyond

Any observant motorist who happened to be abroad last weekend must have been impressed by the sedate, almost painfully demure behaviour of 99 per cent, of drivers, at least of that large number who bowled out in the sunshine up the Hutt Valley way. Tiie majority of motorists drove as though an inspector stood at each intersection.

Of course, there were one or two notable exceptions, but of them more later.

Along the good Hutt Road with the bad reputation given to it by some drivers there was a long, evenlyprogressing procession of extremely careful motorists all enjoying the sunshine, or giving a fair imitation of it. at 20, 25 or 30 miles an hour. No one was hurt and every carload went somewhere in safety. Even the public conveyances were travelling at a sedate pace. No one seemed to want to break the line of steady-going procession. It was an object-lesson in pleasurable, safe travel.

No one seemed to want to hoot boorishly at the driver in front. What was the reason for that studied display of common sense?

Have the motorists taken the can-didly-given warnings from the magisterial bench that speed and negligence will be met by salutary punishment?

Is it dawning on the road-user that there is far too much speed, particularly on the Hutt Road? If so, then common sense and an appreciation of danger is being impressed on motorists. It is well for all drivers to know that no matter what their cars will do they are not going to be allowed to prove it except on a racetrack —and the Hutt Road isn’t a racetrack, nor is any other roadway in the Dominion. Now, for the exceptions. While the Hutt Road traffic was exemplary in its conduct there were one or two fool drivers up toward Trentham way. The road skirting the river near

Manor Park golf links is narrow, undulating and winding, and that’s where one came upon the exceptions The worst was a woman driver in a small brown car, laden with young people. She broke the line on the brow of a rise, ducked and dived in and out, and, travelled mostly on her incorrect side of the winding, narrow road. Motorists honked her for taking dangerous risks at cutting across tlielr bows, but it made no difference.

Any driver who does Unit sort of thing is irresponsible, judged by com-mon-sense driving standards. Then there were three motor-cyclists who simply had to pass everything on the road.

And two drivers of those 79 or SO flat-out big cars didn’t take chances on the narrow roads, hut on a straight they made a huge draught. Like the woman witli tiie small car and the children, and thff motorcyclists, they were out after some record or other, such as going from Wellington to Trentham and back before dark. They call it going for a run on a Sunday afternoon,

People who regard motoring as the simple process of packing the whole family into a chariot, and then faring forth to subject them to Ijie risk of extermination through sheer folly shouldn’t be in charge of a motor vehicle.

But fortunately those people are few, and if the conduct of traffic on the Hutt Road on Sunday is symptomatic they will be fewer in future. All sane drivers will hope so.