SPEED OF MOTOR-CARS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 87, 12 April 1912, Page 3

SPEED OF MOTOR-CARS.

'AUCKLAND DOCTOE* FINED. [bx xileoraph— bpicial to ihb poit.J AUCKLAND, This Day. A case involving the question as to what is a reasonable speed at which, to travel in a motor-car 8u a public thoroughfare was heard by Mr. F. V. Fraser, S.M., yesterday, in which Dr. de Clivc Low© was charged with having driven liis motor-car at a dangerous ! speed in Karangahape-road. Tha con&table who laid the information estimated the speed at which the medical mau was travelling at about twenty-three or twenty-five miles an hour. < Mr. J. R. Reed, who appeared on behalf of tho doctor, contended that in the circumstances twenty miles an houi was not an unreasonable rate- to be travelling, at. It was a Sunday lnornin}", the road was clear, and there were few pedestrians about. The viewpoint *i present in regard to speed was vastly different to the notions that previously prevailed. Oar tram-cars and other eunveyances travelled at twenty miles an hour, a speed which would have been deemed exceedingly dangerous in the olden times. Th» Magistrate remarked that there was no doubt that the present was an age of speed. The speed limit at" Wellington and other places had been defined at twenty miles an hour, although he took it that if a person travelled at that rate in a crowded thoroughfare he would be prosecuted. It might be quite true that there was iio traffic on the road, but the car had been travelling at a rate which had been deemed dangerous by the various local bodies he had mentioned. Although there wore only a few pedestrians about, it must be remembered that they might have chosen to cross the road at any time; also, the fact must not be lost sight of that there •were several cross streets that might have been used' at any time by vehicles or pedestrians. In these circumstances he must hold that a speed of from twenty to twenty-five miles an hour was excessive. He quite Tecognised that the doctor was travelling on urgent business, but a doctor hurrying to save a patient's life was not justified in risking the lives of other people. Taking all the circumstances of tie case into consideration, h© would only , inflict a nominal fine of 10b and costs.