DRIVING IN LONDON

Evening Star, Issue 22229, 6 January 1936, Page 11

DRIVING IN LONDON

LEARNERS ARE LABELLED A New Zealander who visits England and drives his own car through London and the countryside itself finds something to confuse him but, on the other hand, there are features of traffic control in England which are pleasing. “ In London,” said a New Zealand driver who recently returned from England, “you do not pull into the left-hand side of the road before waiting a chance to make a turn to the right. You pull into the middle of the road and stop with the car pointing the way you want to go, and then dash across when the Opportunity offers. While you are stopped the stream of traffic passes on ypur left, or inside you, which is’ illegal in New Zealand. It takes a good while for a New Zealander to get used to that. Of course, the traffic there is so much more dense, and so much faster.” The London authorities are considering banning horse-drawn vehicles in certain areas, as they hold up a fastmoving line of traffic. _ Dawdling is not encouraged. English roads appeared to be nearly perfect, yet schemes were in hand to make them still better. One feature of country motoring that struck him was the use of “ by-pass ” roads to save going through towns and villages. With a place such as Kaiapoi, the main road would swing right round the town, and motorists could go round without slackening speed. That saved time and traffic jams, and minimised the chance of accident. In all built-up areas there was a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, and that was a great thing. No other speed limit was in force, and the tendency was to go fast upon the open roads. In England, a person learning to drive a car has a big letter L attached to the vehicle, so that other road users will know_ and make allowances for possible mistakes. He was struck by the _ fact that there are no long straight stretches of road. They are all winding, following the old Roman roads _ which were built to skirt. the rises in the undulating country. “ The hulk of the road accidents in Britain were those in which pedestrians were injured,” h'e said, “ and that situation was met with the ‘ Belisha beacons.’ Those are sevenfoot poles with round yellow globes at the top, placed in pairs on opposite sides of the road. If pedestrians step off the pavement between the poles and make straight across the road to the opposite poles, then the onus is on the motorist to see that they come to no harm. The motorist can easily see the beacons, and take care when passing them. The arrangement works very well.”