MOTORDOM

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 201, 22 May 1936, Page 15

MOTORDOM

by

Chassis

CURE FOR COLLISIONS ON NARROW BRIDGES

New Plymouth Motorist Makes a Useful Proposal

For some months past the executives of automobile associations of the North and South Islands have been discussing the question of a convention for hill-using traffic. It has been held in one quarter that the down-bound vehicle should stop and give preference to the up-bound vehicle; in another quarter it is held that the car with the inside running should halt. No finality has been reached. Now the suggestion has been made for a convention for bridgeusing traffic, where bridges are too narrow for vehicles to pass each other.

The question of bridges has been raised by Mr. H. H. Moller, of New Plymouth, who says, and rightly so, that nine out of ten of the accidents on bridges, or near them, could be avoided. All it means is for one driver to give way and let the other fellow have it. Tie thinks that a definite rule applicable throughout the Dominion should be made. lie suggests a very simple and safe measure which could be put into effect. It is this: Paint the western or northern end of each bridge (whichever it might be) with a bright red for the stop sign, and the eastern or southern cud white. If the cost of painting the ends were considered too great a sign could be bolted on each end of the bridges. His reason that definite ends of the bridges should be painted is that a motorist driving in a westerly direction is more liable to be blinded by the sun. Most of the bridge accidents seemed to be caused in the afternoon.

Mr. Moller considers that the proposal could be taken up by the Main Highways Board, or it all automobile associations made a special appeal to all motorists to join an association sufficient extra funds could be obtained to cover the cost. Mr. Moller says that he is prompted to make these suggestions after witnessing a collision on a bridge in broad daylight. There is undoubted merit in Mr. Moller’s suggestion, and his would have its practicability fully explored if he brought it under the notice of his district automobile association.

New Zealand has far too many narrow bridges, and the practice is not always followed, particularly in the South Island, of warning the roaduser that two vehicles cannot pass on a bridge.

These narrow bridges are anachronisms; they are not in keeping with the modern road-building procedure, and are relics of times when there was less money wheedled out of the road-user for roads and bridges. But those narrow bridges, as bridges, are not of themselves dangerous. It is the road-using vehicle in relation to them which converts a perfectly safe narrow bridge into a source of danger. In other words some driver refuses, or neglects, to give precedence to some other driver, and trouble starts. Some breakdown vehicle removes the junk and the narrow bridge, perhaps slightly damaged, is left alone until the next pair of mechanical gladiators decide that the right of way can be settled by scraping the wings and run-ning-boards off each other. All this bridge jousting boils down to the simple explanation, discourtesy.

Drivers have bad manners, they are in no hurry, yet they nose determinedly and as fast as they can on to a bridge to beat the other fellow who is just as stupid. If motorists cannot, when they reach a narrow bridge, pull in to the side of the road as a signal to the other fellow to come on, then the adoption of some proposal such as that outlined by Mr. Moller would certainly go a long way toward ending these bridge crashes.