MOTOR DRIVING IN BLACKOUT

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 42, 13 November 1941, Page 5

MOTOR DRIVING IN BLACKOUT

Test Of Paper-Covered Lamps

Those who were in the vicinity of Clyde Quay on Sunday night last during Wellington’s blackout period saw three pairs of ghostly eyes gleaming out of the velvet night. Moving slowly, they gave night walkers the impression of the old Hallowe'en illuminated pumpkin lights. These, it seems, were the lights on the cars of the chief traffic inspector, Mr. L. S. Drake, and two of his assistants, who were testing out, under blackout conditions, the efficiency or otherwise of the double thickness of paper prescribed for use on motor-car parking lights- during an emergency. Detailed reports will doubtless be made, but it is gathered that the illumination was useless to drivers, save that a car by moving closely parallel with the kerb might be able, with safety, to travel at four miles an hour. Higher speed would be dangerous. , Pedestrians were able to get out of the way, as they could see the dimmed lights coming at them, but pedestrians in dark clothes were invisible to the drivers. On Monday night officials of the Automobile Association (Wellington) conducted a test in a dark section of the Hutt Road, comparing the papercovered parking lights with lamps fitted with the three-slotted metal masks, now standard in England. It was considered by those present that the British device, which permits of no upward ray of light, was superior, both from the driver’s point of view and that of the pedestrian.