BUS DRIVERS' AGES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19072, 17 July 1925, Page 11

BUS DRIVERS' AGES.

SUGGESTED SYDNEY LIMIT.

GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSAL

[FROM OUR OWN CORRKSPCKDENT. ] SYDNEY, July 9. With the lives of countless thousands of people now entrusted every day in the city and the suburbs to motor-buses and their drivers, the proposal of the State Government to amend the law so that licences shall not lo issued to any person to drive a bus unless he is at least 19 years of age, will find general endorsement. While ono may lie young, chronologically, he may be old and trustworthy in experience—while, in other words, in some instances a youth 16 or 17 may be more reliablo as a bus driver than ono who is older in years—the Cabinet has probably based its proposal on the accepted rule generally that in manhood one has a greater sense of responsibility than in youth, especially where there are other lives in his safe keeping.

The Local Government Association is now urging upon the authorities, as further public safeguards, the desirableness of, bus drivers being medically examined periodically, to see that they retain the necessary physical fitness for their work; of the buses being Compulsorily inspected from time to time, to make sure that they are free from mechanical defects; and of stop lights or some other device being installed at the rear, as a warning to traffic behind.

The people of Sydney nowadays are so much the sport of. vehicle traffic that crowds the streets, that some such precautions as these are necessary, if they are. to breathe a little more freely oil gfting ou. their lawful.occasions*