SAFETY FOR CARS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 18, 17 December 1938, Page 9

SAFETY FOR CARS

EXERCISE OF CARE. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Dec. 16. The coming holiday season will doubtless intensify some problems concerning motor-cars, and among them the problem of preventing theft. The Minister of Justice (Hon. H. G. R. Mason), in an interview this evening, said that motorists themselves could assist very materially if, when parking a car after dark, they habitually locked or removed some part essential to its propulsion. “Unfortunately, in approximately 90 per cent, of cases of theft or unlawful conversion of cars, the offender is under the age of 23 years,” said Mr Mason. “In 216 out of 481 cases before the Courts during 1936, accused were under the age of 17 years. The saying ‘opportunity makes the thief has special force. It is a simple matter to lock a car. Unfortunately, in many makes of cars one lock is very like another, but it is nearly always found that the motorist has,not even availed himself of that security which the lock does provide. But even in the case ol cars without any lock it is a simple precaution, taking only a moment, to pull out and put in one’s pocket some small part essential to the car’s running. Apart from each car-owner so guarding himself against loss he will be doing an important social service. “In the first place he will very likely be saving another car-owner from loss, and perhaps from injury or death, for it is these stolen cars which are almost invariably driven recklessly and are most liable to be engaged in collisions. In the next place' he is preventing youths entering upon a course of conduct which, unhappily in many cases, is the beginning of a career of crime.”