NOT A JOKE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 198, 4 August 1928, Page 14

NOT A JOKE

TAIL-LIGHTS FOR PEDESTRIANS,

A few years ago the idea of pedestrians carrying lights at night to protect themselves from motor traffic on the public highways would have been accepted only as a subject for laughter—a good one for a vaudeville joke. But now times have changed. Some pedestrians—and we might regard them as the wiser section —do actually carry lights now when they walk along poorly illuminated roads at night, and by so doing they perform a very good, and very necessary, service for themselves and for motorists. Many people have been killed by motor-cars on dark roads because of their own ignorance of motoring conditions. With good headlights and a clear road ahead a motorist can see clearly any object on his path in time to steer clear of it or stop his car before reaching it, if necessary, but there are numerous circumstances which arise at times without warning and prevent motorists from seeing the road before them. The dazzling lights of an approaching car, for instance, might flash suddenly in the face or a motorist, and prevent him from seeing anything in front of him at all. In the brief interval of temporary blindness he might overtake a pedestrian walking along the road in the same direction as that in which the motorist is driving. Not having seen the pedestrian before the dazzling lights began to affect his vision, the motorist might not stop his car or change his course in any way, with the result that the pedestrian will be run down. Had that pedestrian known of the conditions under which motor driving has to be done at night he would not have trusted the motorist to see him, even though he knew the road was well illuminated 6y the lights from the car. He would have known that although he was in the direct ray of light from the car headlights that did not necessarily mean that he could be seen by the motorist; and so he would have got off the road, til) the car passed. The dazzle problem is still unsolved, and while it remains so pedestrians will be run down, and collisions between cars and cycles will continue at night. It is satisfactory to see on some of the outer highways, where unmade footpaths compel people to walk on the centre roadways, pedestrians carrying lights (usually hurricane lamps or bicycle lamps) at night. Certainly the number of these wise pedestrians is small yet, but it is a beginning. REAR-LIGHTS FOR PEDESTRIANS. The problem relating to the use of roads by pedestrians at night, and the danger to them from motor traffic, is not confined to any one country. It is even more serious in England and America than it is in the Dominion. The need for the carrying of rear-lights by pedestrians at night is being given serious attention in Great Britain at the present time. An English woman has invented a belt which embodies an electric battery and a red light casting its beams to the rear, to warn the lordly motorist that a humbler user of the highway is before him. The London “Daily Telegraph” warmly advocates the use of this device by all pedestrians wbo are compelled to use the roads after darkness. Back of any jocular suggestion there is a vein of sober commonsense in this proposal. Undoubtedly many pedestrians are killed on dark country roads simply because approaching motorists have not seen them. There is a dead spot in every headlight, and given certain conditions, it is impossible to see objects ahead of the car when they are in certain locations as regards the driver. It is a question whether the idea of having pedestrians wear rear lights could be “put across” because of its inevitable humorous suggestion. It has been predicted by an American journal that in a few years more, at the present rate of increase of motor vehicles in U.S.A., pedestrians will be wearing both number plates and taillights.