FROM CHAOS TO CORONER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 116, 19 May 1930, Page 10

FROM CHAOS TO CORONER

In Australia they arc meeting with many of the motor traffic problems New Zealand has met, but perhaps more notice is being taken of them over there. Localisation of licensing and administrative control has created the usual difficulties—such as caused the British Royal Commission to describe localisation as archaic and chaotic —and some of these were referred to in evidence before the Arbitration Court concerning railways and road traffic in Victoria. Road rules, stated a witness, vary as between city and municipality, and as between various municipalities. Judge Drake-Brockman was able to add that there was nothing to show whore one municipality ends and another begins. When counsel sought to mitigate the seriousness of the risk by suggesting that the witness had never been fined because of : the complexity, the Judge interjected: "Well, I have!" Another problem not unknown.in New Zealand is that of the pedestrian who walks on the motor traffic way. On 6th May a Melbourne Coroner stated that within a fortnight he had investigated two such cases resulting in the death of pedestrians. He added that "if it was

necessary for pedestrians to walk on roadways he thought that it was obviously : safer'1* for . them to walk 'against' the traffic instead of in the same direction." Both in country and in city there are many New Zealand roads that have'no footpath. There is, for instance, no footpath conr.'ccting Wellington and Karori, has not been for weeks past 5 and may not be for weeks to come.