SPLASH-PROOF WHEELS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6672, 27 July 1928, Page 4

SPLASH-PROOF WHEELS

Fashionable Parisienncs may now patter along the narrow sidewalks of their citys winding streets without fear of having their chic gowns splashed .by automobiles. Recently the police prefect issued an .edict obliging owners of motor vehicles tVeighing more than 3000 kilograms , to provide their cars with mud protectors. The police have orders to arrest 1 drivers failing to comply with this regulation, and pedestrians whoso clothes are soiled by mud splashed over them .by passing cars may claim heavy dan* ages. Paris is the first European city to make mud protectors an motor vehicles obligatory. : In its narrow streets passing automobiles frequently deluge with mud and water from the gutters not only passers-by, but* fruit and vegetable stalls. • The police have not specified any particular kind of mud protector. The result is that trucks with all sorts of devices are now racing through the streets. The best protectors hang from the hub in the form of rubber brushes. Others consist of a rubber flange projecting slightly from the tyre rim. The latter, have been in use for many years on the Paris buses, where they have proves fairly successful. At present the police are fully occupied testing the infinite variety- of , splash guards called into existence by the prefects order, amid great excite-. , ment in the automotive world and to the vast amusement of ,the ‘protected’ public.' Splash-proof devices have been .compulsory in Japan for some years.