The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1935. REDUCING MOTOR MORTALITY.

Evening Star, Issue 22047, 5 June 1935, Page 8

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1935. REDUCING MOTOR MORTALITY.

It is good news that Major HortS Belisha is succeeding in his elaborate attempts to diminish British motor fatalities. With his signs and_ his beacons and his pedestrian crossings, not to mention the restored speed limit, the Minister of Transport has been much more a bilgbear to a proportion of the British population than another msljor holding Ministerial rank beside him has been to New Zealanders. There is small doubt some motorista have thought him as tM as the mail in Kipling’s story who held up navigation with the rafts and light? which he strung in a harrow strait, because it got on his nerves to see all the waves going streaky the same way. At the same time his devices for saving lives in the cities have afforded more amusement to the comic journals than anything they have had for years. Aided probably by the super-CxccllencO of roads, the speed mania which too easily possesses motorists seems to hare passed all bounds in England; it is wonderful what callousness it can breed. The motoring page of a recent ‘ Saturday Review,’ commenting upon the hated speed restrictions, devoted a column and a-half to attempting to prove that the British motor industry is being ruined, and in the whole course of the article there is not onq Word to show that the writer is even aware that human lives are at stake. No nonsense about “safety first” in that! A regular contributor to the 1 Spectator ’ brings the weight of its columns to support the argument that care for the speed limit can he a danger to pedestrians as well as a nuisance to drivers. To quote his remarkable reasoning; “ Every driver, 1 suppese. in a thirtymiio limit tries to keep one eye on the speedometer and one on file road [eye ‘glued’ on the speedometer is another phrase which he uses], though the latter is often distracted by the numerous signs to be noted on the edge of the pavement (if there is one). Human optical faculties were not designed for such multiple and simultaneous activity, and there is a very real danger lest accidents be actually invited by wellintentioned attempts to avoid them. An experienced driver can no doubt judge, without constantly watching bis speedometer, when he is dqing about thirty miles an hour, but not dll drivers arc experienced, and no one, whether he is or not, is disposed to run much risk after warnings that the police will be on him if they find him doing thirty-one.” The argument becomes amassing when one remembers how a glance at the speedometer suffices, and hOw speedometers are fixed nowadays so that they can bo seen almost through the steering wheel, One would think that, in congested areas, the driver would be content to do well under thirty miles for the sake of being on the safe side, but apparently any argument to give freedom to the motorist is thought

sufficient. When his devices and restrictions have become a commonplace and the discipline they are designed to inculcate has sunk in, the nation will thank Major Hore-Belisha for saving it lives, the importance of which it would realise if they were required to be lost in war. The Minister recently reported that during a nine weeks’ period, though the number of licensed vehicles in Britain increased by over 12 per cent,, fatalities wore reduced by 30 per cent, and injuries by 15 per cent. That meant, compared with the figures for the corresponding period of 1934, that 153 fewer persons had been killed and 2,699 fewer injured. He reports now that pedestrian crossings, of which 10,000 were laid down in London within three months, have undoubtedly been responsible for saving life and limb, In London, where the safety measures have so far been chiefly concentrated, there has been a greater percentage of reduction in accidents than in the country ns a whole. The speed limit has made for a safer and more agreeable flow of traffic. The most depressing feature of- the accident returns was the large number of children involved, 1,171 of 3,617 pedestrians killed on the roads in 1935 being under fifteen years old. The Minister can afford to ignore ridicule, which is unlikely to last long, while he reduces those figures.