MOTORDOM

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 260, 30 July 1937, Page 15

MOTORDOM

by

Chassis

WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT ROAD SAFETY?

Necessity for a Well-planned DominionWide Drive

Judging by its concentration on the motorist it seems that the Transport Department might be renamed more aptly the Motor Department of the Government. It is not suggested that concentration is not needed on the control, regulation and education of those who drive motor-vehicles. What is suggested, however, is concentration on every road-user, the motorist included. Until the department is in a position to supply that equality of treatment the so-called safety campaign is a misfire.

Except on paper the ytedestrian and the cyclist are being left out of the safety education picture. It is not an easy matter to reach the pedestrian, the cyclist and the driver of the horsedrawn vehicle. Those units lack an organisation through which they can be reached and preached to. They are you and me and the other fellow. They do not carry numbers, they do not have to register annually. They do not pass any sort of test of ability before they use the roads.

The Commissioner of Transport knows that the decrease in accidents is applicable to vehicular traffic, and that the position insofar as pedestrians are concerned is not as satisfactory as it should, be. It is logical to suppose that if some of the time spent by the department in regulating and controlling the motorist were devoted to other sections of road-users there might be an all-round improvement. While an army of inspectors throughout the Dominion, no doubt, will have a steadying influence on the motorist those inspectors are hopelessly inadequate to deal effectively with the übiquitous pedestrian, for instance. Something more than the personal message possible through inspectors is called for. To be done properly the safety education of the pedestrian is a job for planning and money-spending. When the National Hoad Safety Council started its work there was talk of such a campaign, something comprehensive in its scope, something to cost a good deal of money. So far that campaign has boiled down to the collection of statistics, the issue of booklets, and the enforcement of regulations under which the motorist is concerned mostly.

The pedestrian regulations in application are farcical for several reasons. One of the chief reasons is that the pedestrians have never heard of the regulations, and the issue of booklets to them will not teach them. Something more interesting, dramatic, spectacular, must be done than that, and until the Government provides that something in the form of a properly-

prepared onslaught on the ignorance which exists valuable time is being wars ted.

If the motorists exhibit a blase attitude toward safety talk, and if the lengthy analyses which'the newspapers publish from time to time lose the flavour of novelty, the Commissioner of Transport will not need to go outside his own department - for an explanation.

The motorists are being fed with figures proving, inter alia, what they already know, namely, that the pedestrian and the cyclist are being hurt or killed. Of course they are. Why? Not because of wrong-doing by the motorist all the time. There is contributtory negligence, quite a lot of it. The pedestrian and his o r her children are ignorant of the regulations. They don’t know any better. No thorough-going attempt is being made to assist them. Prosecution might teach the motorist, but the education of the pedestrian in that way is a different proposition. The latest Transport Department contribution to the cause of road safety is the suggestion that all motorists should carry a first-arid outfit. Such an outfit would not prevent an accident, of course, but it would be useful, mark you, after the accident. The point has .been raised in the South Island of the potential danger through the use of first-arid kits by inexperienced persons. The department has not yet suggested that pedestrians or cyclists should carry such outfits, which might act, in the absence of any pedestrian-aimed safety campaign by the department, iu the same way as a rabbit’s foot is attractive to certain coloured gentlemen. Fire-extinguishers are also necessary in cars; hounds of varying sizes are not; nor are some of the nerve-shatter-ing horns in fairly common use. Marker lights ou lorries are necessities, so are properly-affixed rear-view mirrors on lorries; stop-lights ou trams, pedestrian crossing places and safety zones, but where are they? When will all units of traffic he dealt with. in a co-ordinated safety drive. Dominion-wide, comprehensively planned?