BLACK-OUT DRIVING

Evening Star, Issue 24297, 11 September 1942, Page 4

BLACK-OUT DRIVING

NEED FOR NEW REGULATIONS Once again there was demonstrated during the blackout hour on Thursday night the practical impossibility of traffic movement with the only headlighting allowed under- the lighting regulations—that is, parking lights of not more than seven watts dimmed with two thicknesses of newspaper, or an equivalent, states the Wellington. 1 1’ost.’ livery motorist is supposed to carry newspaper for that purpose at all times, and can bo fined, or worse, it he forgets about it; but the certainty is that not one driver in 20 has a sheet of newspaper in his car, except by that day’s purchase to take home, or by accident. It is physically impossible to drive with papered parking lights, but the half-glow-worm glimmer that gets through is not a practical driving light. The papered parking light was a copy of one part of the British blackout code for motor vehicles, but that part has nothing to do with driving in Britain, where, from early in the war, headlights have been used, masked to reduce the light so as to give about 20 m.p.h. safety and hooded to prevent upward escape of rays. Papered park lights are turned on in Britain when a car is stopped to show that it is where it is; there papered park lights are supposed to be used for driving, and are switched off when the car is . parked. That these papered park lights were wholly ineffective was officially admitted the beat part of a year ago when E.P.S. drivers who tried to get through a Wellington blackout found they could not do it. A committee was set up, experiments were made, masks shapes and types and sizes were soldered up and taken out and iried. A very effective mask has been used on council buses for montlis. Regulations were immediately pending. On August 20 last new lighting regulations, overriding previous regulations, were gazetted. (Incidentally, for the first time they give official recognition to the term “ brown-out,” the reduction of escape of light by drawing of blinds and dimming of street, shop, and window lighting, etc.). All was brought up to date with the exception of moving traffic lighting. However, it is stated that regulations which will say something definite about masks for motor headlights are once more immediately pending. For the civilian motorist the matter is perhaps not vital, for in case of trouble he would be ordered to pull to the side of the road and stop, but it is of importance to the whole E.P.S. organisation, for as long as papered parking lights are the rule the E.P.S. =is tied down to foot pace, on foot or on wheels.