INQUIRY COMMISSION SUGGESTED FOR N.Z. TRAFFIC CONTROL

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 December 1947, Page 3

INQUIRY COMMISSION SUGGESTED FOR N.Z. TRAFFIC CONTROL

(P.A.), AUCKLAND, December 15. A commission of inquiry into New Zealand traffic control, the transfer of all traffic officers to a special branch of the Police Department, and the overhaul of. traffic regulations were advocated by Mr J. H. Luxford, senior Stipendiary Magistrate in Auckland, in an address to the Auckland Rotary Club. • “I have stated from the Bench, and I repeat here that the standard of driving has deteriorated -and is deteriorating,” said Mr Luxford. “By ‘the standard of driving’ I do not mean that the skill of the drivers has deteriorated—indeed it has improved to marked degrees, especially among that large body of men who drive service cars, buses, and commercial vehicles. It is the too-frequent misuse of their skill to which I am referring, and the same applies to many private drivers. “Social Problem" ‘Motor traffic in New Zealand has jaecome a social problem. The yearly toll of killed and injured continues, and the material damage caused is (terrific. Very few people realise how large is our yearly bill for repair of damage resulting from motor accidents. -I only wish insurance compaines would publish annually the details of accident claims paid by them alone. I am certain they would shock the public. “The whole trouble lies in inadequate policing of our highways and in the inadequacy of penalties imposed on offending drivers. The time has arrived for the setting up of a commission of inquiry to examine the hvhole system of control. Many local bodies control traffic in their respective areas. In others, officers of the Department control traffic, but the police do the real work because they investigate accidents. Unjier the present system nearly every prosecution for breaches of the rules of the road, and for dangerous or negligent driving is the result of police investigation after an accident has been reported to them. “Control to be effective must catch the dangerous driver and negligent driver, irrespective of whether an accident results. That should be obvious, but I have heard a lawyer urge as a reason for imposing a light penalty the fact that no collision took place or that only slight damage was done.” Road Policing Mr Luxford said that the inadequacy of road policing would disappear if all local body and Transport Department traffic inspectors were transferred to the Police Department and traffic control for New Zealand came under the Commissioner of Police. Every traffic inspector on patrol duty should have a vehicle equipped with a moving-pic-ture camera, in the same way as fighter aircraft were equipped during the war. “That would put a stop to the well-intentioned lying that we heai- so often in traffic cases,” he added, “and also to the honest lying of the motor driver who subconsciously reconstructs the scene on the basis that he could not have been in the wrong.

“If a commission of inquiry was set up, one of its main tasks would tfe to overhaul the traffic regulations," he concluded. “They must be simple and effective, understandable and understood,” he said. “Nobody , cansay that the most important of all rules of the road, the right-hand rule is simple, understandable, or understood.”