INCONSIDERATE DROVERS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 7, 8 December 1931, Page 2

INCONSIDERATE DROVERS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —While we all admit the difficulty of handling stock on much-fre-quented roads, with the further admission that the average motorist helps the drover all he can, we are, at the same time, reluctantly driven to the conclusion that the average drover does not return the compliment. Almost every day 1 come across glaring cases of the litter disregard, of the drover for the road rights of the motorist. Stock are driven all over the road without the slightest regard for motor traffic Frequently mobs of cattle and sheep are to be found forming a “queue” half a mile long—-there seems to be neither head nor tail to the procession. In too many instances the drover does not take the slightest trouble to let the motorist through. For myself, I always take up the attitude 'that to rush through stock is to make confusion worse confounded. Where a drover makes an honest attempt to clear a way, I assure him there is no hurry—l will get through all right. I usually find such consideration appreciated. In many cases, the puzzle is to find the drover; he is sometimes found a mile down the road talking to someone else. Just the other day whilst driving along a very fine piece of bitumen, with a splendid macadam road on either side, I met a drover; he and his horse on the correct side of the road, while the stock were all over the bitumen and tire balance on the road as well, and I was compelled to almost stop, and eventually take to the wrong side of the road to' get through, while the driver meandered along in the most aimless manner, making no attempt whatsoever to keep the sfock in anything like "battle formation.” My own impression is there are inexperienced drovers on the road, and I would suggest that the time lias arrived for our traffic inspectors to take a hand in the game, and shake the offenders up.—l am, etc., MOTORIST. 7/12/31.