ROAD HOARDINGS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 76, 31 March 1939, Page 6

ROAD HOARDINGS

DANGEROUS FACTOR?

CONDEMNED BY ROAD SAFETY COUNCIL

Roadside hoardings had no friends at the meeting of the Road Safety Council yesterday, but there was a difference of opinion whether they created an actual danger. There was no disagreement that they are bad from an aesthetic point of view. The Railway Department was again criticised for its attitude. Not only were hoardings increasing in number, said Miss M. Magill, but it appeared to be the present practice to erect them at larger points. An illuminated hoarding at the Petone railway crossing introduced a definite danger, at a point where all the drivers' attention should be paid to the road and the crossing. She moved formally that the council should deprecate the increase in the number of hoardings, especially at danger spots and railway crossings. The motion did not go far enough, said Mr. C. J. Talbot. He would like to see hoardings taken from the roads altogether, though probably if that were done they would simply be moved back to private property. RAILWAY ATTITUDE WRONG. "Hoardings are definitely bad," he said. "They distract the driver's attention. The policy of the Main Highways Board is to discourage .them as far as possible, and our policy should be to endeavour to have them prohibited. The Railway Departments action in this matter is wrong. The few paltry pounds of revenue they gain from hoardings are neither here nor there."The array of hoardings about the Hutt Road overbridge was a particularly bad example, he said. There the driver's attention should be concentrated upon the road, but the whole effort of the hoarding was to take attention from the road. It was a remarkable contrast to turn from the^ efforts made by the local authorities and others to beautify roadsides to the hoardings going up everywhere.. Miss Magill: I have no objection to a more strongly worded motion. I certainly hate these hoardings, and in certain localities, as at the Petone crossing, they create an actual danger. DEGREE OF ADDED DANGER? The Commissioner of Transport, Mr, !G. L. Laurenson, said that everyone agreed that hoardings were undesirable from an aesthetic point of view, but it was difficult to prove that they constituted a road danger. Mr. J. S. Hawkes: They certainly disfigure the landscape. There was no doubt that there was I a growing public feeling against hoardings, said Mr. Talbot. The council had a perfect" right to express a strong opinion about them. Mr. Laurenson said that hoardings probably were a danger on country roads, but were less so on city roads. Mr. M. F. Luckie said that it would be very difficult to establish to the satisfaction of a Court that a hoarding had contributed to a driver's failure to act properly. X-. "Not such a hoarding as that at ■the Petone railway crossing," said Miss. Magill. "I am in entire agreement with Miss Magill," said Mr. W. O'Callaghan* "And there is no question that the Railway Department is the worst of-» fender of all."

, He suggested that Miss Magill should agree to interview, before the next council meeting, those responsible for the railways policy as to hoardings, but he knew where that would lead to—nowhere at all.

Mr. Luckie said that the City Council had been striving; to induce the Railway Department to cease advertising on the Hutt Road, but without any effect.

Mr. O'Callaghan said that they did seem to be getting somewhere when the former Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, took the matter up, but since then the position had become worse.

Miss Magill's motion was carried unanimously.