Out With the AA Patrol

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22250, 26 October 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

Out With the AA Patrol

1 Have you ever had the nightmare experience of your car skidding i to the edge of a precipice and hanging there on "he brink while some 4 kind friend hastily tied a ropo to the back of tha car and hauled you i back to safety? _ , | Did vou ever strike a patch of soft sand out on one of the \\est f Coast beaches and feel the back wheels slowly sinking—sinking—while i the seventh wave came rushing up in a smother of white foam, nearer 4 —nearer—until it was swirling all round you? These are emergencies ♦ in which the Automobile Association's "Get You Home ' service would i shine like'a good deed in a naughty world! i As a matter of fact, the A.A. patrol has handled situations just as ♦ desperate as these, and many a motorist has gooci cause to thank this 4 organisation for assistance rendered in time of emergency, and sometimes t of real peril. The following article, based on an interview with an A.A. t patrol officer this week, will give readers some idea of the activities of 4 this progressive and helpful organisation, which now ministers to the | travel-welfare of some 17,000 members. tT T

OF THE ROAD? ] Well, there aren't many left nowadays," said the patrol officer. ''lt was the pioneers of the early' days who knew all about thrills! A journey of twenty miles a dav was an achievement then, as performed by the old steam car and singlecylinder petrol engines. Even ten years iigo many an Auckland motorist knew the joy of being bogged at night on dav roads, of wading through seas of mud to some distant farmhouse and lagging shelter for the night. If there was no farmhouse, he simply went to sleep in the car and got a horse from jiomewhero or -other next morning to tow hirn out." Even as he spoke, memory came of a certain run through the Awakino Valley just after the new road was opened, some twelve years ago, of a soft patch where six cars were bogged and dug out by the roadmen in one afternoon, of a lorry upside down in the river just outside the tunnel through the cliffs, of the twisted remains of a motor-car which had caught fire and burned to ashes by the roadside, of a motor-cveje wrecked on a bend, and horrid recollection! —of a service car which came rushing round a sharp corner, forcing another car to the very brink of ft hundred-foot drop in order lto avoid a head-on collision! But those experiences belonged to a decade that iis past; metalled highways have taken the place of the old clay roads, corners ]have been cut away, roads widened, and the way made safe for all knights of the road. Yet, even nowadays, there are perils of flood and landslide, which in a few irinments work untold havoc and make good roads suddenly most unsafe for travellers. Not long ago, a service car encountered a heavy slip on A narrow mountain road. Workmen 'wer a clearing the debris, and the car proceeded with extreme caution, the outside wheel only a few inches from the edge of a sheer drop of several hundred feet. Halfway across the danger area, another irm or two of

rock and earth suddenly crashed down in front of the car. Driver and passengers were trapped in so precarious a position that none might even move for fear of precipitating the car over the edge. So there they sat while workmen shovelled away the debris. And then at, last the A.A. patrol, in a car ahead, was able to attach a rope to the car and tow :t through to safety. On another occasion, the patrol went to the assistance of several service cars

Mocked by a flooded river. A bridge ■w as being built, and a piank nine inches wide was thrown across the stringers over tlie raging torrent. The passengers had no opt:on save to "walk tbo plank." "Bui. they didn't all walk it, in the strict i>ense of the word," added the patrol officer with a reminiscent twinkle. "There were some ladies, and they crawled over on their hands and knees! Another car was sent out from destination to pick up the passengers, but, in the meantime, another slip came down behind them; they could

not pot back, and it was not until long after dark on a rainy winter night that the trees and rocks were blasted away, so that we could get through." Many a farmer had cause to chuckle over the sad predicament of motorists in the days before the A.A. undertook its "Get You Home" service, and many an Auckland motorist will doubtless remember the old white horse at the Devil's Elbow on the infamous Rangiriris. "He must have towed literally hundreds of cars out," said the officer. "Charges ranged from ten shillings to one pound per tow, so the Rangiriri mud was really a gold mine to at least one struggling farmer!" There were no signposts to show the traveller the way in those days, no comfortable motor camps at the end of the day's run, no picnic sites for holiday makers, nor road and route bulletins that smooth the path of the motorist in these days. All these services are freely rendered by the A. A. to its members to-day, also a "pathfinding" service that plants the wellknown sign on new and remote routes. Wherever there is flood or landslide or snowstorm, there in the shortest possible space of time will be the familiar figure of a patrol officer. During the last severe snowstorm at National Park, the patrols operated from early morning till late at night, in bitter wind and falling snow, extricating motorists who had encountered trouble, and

escorting cars uncertain of the way to take in that perilous wilderness of ice and snow. But the perils and thrills are nearly all gone. The Main Highways Board has revolutionised road travel, and it is only when Nature takes a hand in vindictive mood that there is any real return to the old-time conditions, when a motor holiday tour was a dangerfraught enterprise, to be undertaken only by the adventurous, and to be talked of for years afterwards as the experience of a lifetime 1