ALL VERY DIFFICULT

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 146, 23 June 1938, Page 8

ALL VERY DIFFICULT

NO RIGHTS ANYWHERE INFANTILE PEDESTRIANSHIP Yesterday a paragraph was published stating the ruling of an English v Magistrate that a baby in a pram is l not, by itself in the pram, a pedestrian and has no right of way on a ] pedestrian crossing—shortly, that if the . pram runs away across the road the infant must cease its protests and give way courteously to motor traffic, but ( if the mother is on the road and has < one finger on the pram then traffic ' must with equal courtesy give way to her (not apparently to the infant). j That seem* complicated, but- it is j far worse than that. The infant does i not appear to have any rights at all. ■ Invalids are all right, for (say the regu- , lations):— Pedestrian means any person on foot . . . but the term shall include ■ any person in an invalid chair not i propelled by mechanical power. The regulations are entirely silent ' upon infants and pushcarts. Not so the city bylaws, nqt that they mention infants and pushcarts as such,, but in a fine sweep of words they say this: Vehicle means any conveyance upon or with wheels, whatever its mode of construction, including a wheelbarrow, but shall not include a vehicle running on rails under statutory authority. A tram is not a vehicle, but a pram is. 'If a wheelbarrow is a vehicle, then what about a pushcart, and especially a bassinet? The bylaws are rich in things that must not be done with vehicles. It is quite an offence, for instance, "to deposit or leave standing upon any footway, street, or public place (or even unfenced land) any truck, wheelbarrow, or similar thing." , Trouble awaits him who shall'permit any vehicle or animal or any part of any vehicle or animal, or any pari of any load on any vehicle or animal, to stand on or over any footway—except that if the wheels are backed against the kerb a moderate hang-over is permitted motorists.' Here again the infant is out, for the age restriction bars him from driving licence qualifications, and in any event hang-overs for motorists are discouraged nowadays by the Min- . ister of Transport and the Courts. However one looks at it, the infant . is out of luck as regards pedestrian t rights, and there is another bylaw which proclaims penalties for him who • "carries any load on his shoulders or , otherwise upon or over any footway , to the annoyance, danger, or obstruci tion of any other person using such , footway." No one has yet, in all , probability, succeeded in carrying an '. infant through town without annoying some old grouch. ;' There are ways round the difficulty. " One would be for the infant to affect

(or be affected with) a heavy disguise as a chronic ipvalid, but for mothers who think this too much trouble the way is to walk on the extreme outer edge of the footpath and to wheel the pushcart on the extreme inner edge of the roadway (remembering the cardinal keep-to-the-left rule), though car parking would not render this method always convenient. The difficulty with which the English Magistrate was faced would never have arisen but for motor traffic, and is there not in this pushcart-infant nuisance the solution to the whole traffic problem? Apply the bylaws (or this one, at any rate) rigorously, and withm i a generation mothers would become so discouraged that motorists would die out and none would follow to take their places.