TRAMWAYS FAILURES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19675, 29 June 1927, Page 12

TRAMWAYS FAILURES.

CARS LEFT IN DARKNESS. QUESTION REGARDING RISK. OPPOSING POINTS OF VIEW. There is probably no city dweller who at some time or other has not been travelling in a tramcar when all tilt lights suddenly went out and the vehicle, with the failure of the power supply, came to rest unlimited. Opinion in Auckland on the wisdom of providing tramcars with independent lights, to give warning to traffic of their presence in such cases, is sharply divided The question ha-> come into prominence through a fatality in Manchester caused by a motor-car colliding with an unhghted tramcar and killing an alighting passen ger The presiding judge said it was "unsafe and dangerous" to permit tramcars to remain unlighted and a remedy should be found. Cost of Auxiliary Lights. "The cost of maintaining independent oil or other lights to provide for such contingencies, which, after all, are rare, is not warranted," said Mr. A. E. Ford, city tramways manager. "Our streets are well lighted from an independent power supply, and it is seldom indeed that a tramline failure coincides with a street-system breakdown. A car thrown into darkness, therefore, is, usually rendered clearly visible by the street lamps. It is a large object and if a motorist could not 'pick it up' with his lights how would he get on in overtaking horsedrawn vehicles' and pedestrians ? Surely a tramcar in darkness is more obvious than a pedestrian."

Asked whether he had seen auxiliary lights carried on tramcars in other parts of the world, Mr. Ford said it had been the practice in Adelaide to carry oil-lamps but it was by no means a general tiling in the world's great centres of electric traction. He knew of no parallel to the Manchester accident in Auckland—certainly there had been none in the past five years. No Risk ol "Running Away." There was no risk at all of trams •'running away'" downhill when the power failed. Air, track and hand-brakes we e a triple protection against any such con tingency. Cutting-ofT of power did not mean loss of control. The view that the risk of collision with an unlighted tram is meagre was subscribed to by Mr. G. Henning, a vicepresident of the Auckland Automobile Association. "It seems to me the motorists' lights should be good enough to 'pick up' anything as large as a tramcar," he said. Some years ago an Auckland magistrate ruled that the lights of a motor-car should be sufficiently powerful to show up a horse on the road. That, he thought, spoke for itself. Motorists' S«lf-protection. A different attitude was adopted by Dr. J. Howard Lawry, president of the Auckland Automobile Association. While he agreed that normally an unlighted tramcar should be made obvious to the motorist, even by dimmed headlights, there was some element of risk on wet nights, when visibility was materially reduced. "The attitude of the public toward the motorist is that he is responsible for accidents regardless of the negligence of the other party," Dr. Lawry said. "It behoves the motorist, then, in self-protec-tion and defence, to take advantage of every possible safeguard acrainst accident. For thnt reason I think the provision of small battery lights or oil lamps, for use when cars are thrown into darkness, is desirable." Dr. Lawry added he realised there was no legal compulsion for such emergency lighting, and that any action taken, as in placing "stop" signs at the rear of trams, was purely at the volition of the City Council and in conciliatory deference to representations made.