ROAD FOR CAR OR CAR FOR ROAD?

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1937, Page 8

ROAD FOR CAR OR CAR FOR ROAD?

With the general steps taken by the Ministry of Transport to promote greater safety on the roads of the Dominion we believe all classes of the community will be substantially in accord. In a series of recent statements the Minister (Mr. Semple) has reviewed the position to date and is able to show by comparative statistics an appreciable reduction in the accident rate. One of. the causes of accidents is faulty road conditions, and these were examined last year by a sub-committee of the New Zealand Road Safety Council and recommendations made for the removal of these special hazards. Active effect has been given to these recommendations by the Main Highways Board and local bodies are being encouraged to adopt similar remedial measures on the roads under their control. Improvements are already visible over a wide area and motorists will be duly grateful. There is, however, an important point raised by Mr. Semple in a statement today which, if the interpretation is correct, is at least open to argument. In reply to a suggestion by a local body that certain road conditions did not constitute an undesirable feature, as they ensured that the motorist was "compelled to reduce speed almost to a standstill," the Minister said:

The modern car is even now capable of much higher speeds than any of bur roads can permit with safety. Our aim should be constantly to improve our roads in an endeavour to keep pace with modern car development, but at the same time to curb the reckless or careless few who will take risks not warranted by the road improvements so far achieved.

It is true that the Minister qualified his statement by urging the increasing need for "greater attention being paid to the achievement of higTiers standards of care and consideration on the part of:' drivers of motor-vehicles and road-users generally," but he seems lo have adopted the principle that the road should be built for the car and not the ear for the road. Many modern cars, indeed, most of them, are easily capable of speeds of a mile a minute on suil-

able roads, but how many roads in New Zealand are suitable for such speeds and what would it cost with a country of such rugged contours to make them so? Apart from the cost there is the question of safety. Here the experience of Britain is of value, for millions of pounds have been spent there since the War in constructing new arterial roads and by-passes, and it- is seriously argued by sonic authorities in an article in the "Manchester Guardian" (republished in "The Post" today) thai these new constructions have "served to increase danger rather than reduce it." It is stated therein that a "wide road —unless split into separate traffic lanes-—creates exceptional confusion for wheeled traffic and increases risks for motorists and cyclists," and that "there is an urgent demand for the reconstruction of some of these expensive roads and for the erection of footbridges as pedestrian crossings." The same article records the success in Oxfordshire of a different policy, whereby the number of fatal accidents on the country roads fell by half in 1936, compared with 1935. This policy consists in modifying, as far as funds permit, such dangerpoints as "inferior road lay-out, deceptive corners, narrow carriageways, lack of footpaths, and blind junctions." The engineer responsible for this policy contends that "about 60 per cent, of road accidents are caused by bad road lay-out, that 60 per cent, of the accidents could be eliminated by patching up such obvious defects in the existing main roads, and that a further 20 per cent, could be cut out by reconstructing main roads to the theoretically ideal system with twin carriage-ways and other modern improvements." Such a reconstruction of main roads would be quite beyond the resources of New Zealand, but much might be done on the Oxfordshire plan of piecemeal improvement with both highroads and byroads in the Dominion. If this is what Mr. Semple means, and not the building of speedways to test the pace of the modern car, then, we believe, the public will concur.