MOTORING COMES BACK

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 135, 4 December 1935, Page 10

MOTORING COMES BACK

If any proof, visible and tangible, were wanted of economic recovery in New Zealand, it could be had in the great increase in numbers of new motor-cars on the roads and streets. This has been obvious for the last few months, and the process seems to be accelerating. The impression is confirmed by figures, published in "The Post" this week, which show that for the period of the motoring year—May 31 to November 30— nearly fourteen thousand drivers' licences have been issued in Wellington alone, three thousand more than at the corresponding date last year and actually three hundred more than the total of last year. With the summer and holiday season still to come, these figures may be expected to show a further large increase. While it does not follow that every

holder of a motor-driver's licence is the owner of a motor-car, it is'more than likely that ownership, if it does not exist today, may come sooner or later and thus swell the .number of cars on the road. It may be that the majority of the three thousand' new drivers in Wellington are launching out in old cars as motorists in their own right. These new recruits to motoring help to complicate, of course, the already complex problems of traffic and parking, but they probably get more fun out of their venture on the road than the blase owner of his tenth new car. Some day some student of sociology may take it into his head to try to calculate the gains and losses that have come to the community from a generation of motoring. Just at present the trend of opinion is to accentuate the losses— especially the losses measured by the casualty lists —but we are inclined to think that a fair and dispassionate survey would reveal that few inventions in the history of mankind have so widened the scope of life and added to its pleasures.