CARELESS DRIVERS

Evening Post, Issue 51, 28 August 1935, Page 17

CARELESS DRIVERS

HOW ACCIDENTS HAPPEN

(Special to the "Evening Post.")

PALMERSTON N., This Day.

Some interesting comment on the causes of motor accidents was voiced by Mr. H. J. Fowler, traffic inspector of the' Eangitikei County Council, at yesterday's conference.

There was generally an element ot carelessness in every accident, he said. Speed itself was not dangerous, but it was speed in the wrong place that led to trouble. The difficulty with some drivers was that they did not realise when to use speed and when not to.

In his opinion there was not so much reckless driving in New Zealand as' was' imagined, but what he had found was that many motorists did not know how to drive a car properly,' and those people were at all times a danger oil the road.

The chairman (Mr. A. J. Graham): Well, how do they get their licences? Mr. Fowler: When they come before us the examination we give them is completely superficial. I have known those who know all about the regulations and all about how a car is driven, but in spite of this, nobody can discover how they will act in an emergency. .

Mr. Fowler added that there was a need for an inspection of inspectors, so as to get universal methods of examining drivers. Those who by a sequence of accidents or convictions in court revealed that they could not drive should be put off the road altogether. ' They were unfit to drive cars, because they were not temperamentally suited to do so. . ....

Mr. Fowler was also of the opinion that all accidents should be reported, so that they could be inquired into by competent persons. Confining the necessity to report to the police only those accidents where somebody was hurt meant that 75 per cent, of the cases of negligent driving went unchecked.