Less Use of Lights in Future

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22332, 1 February 1936, Page 11 (Supplement)

Less Use of Lights in Future

Illuminated roads on which there would be no occasion for cars to use lights were envisaged by Mr. A. T. V. Robinson, deputy-secretary of the British Ministry of Transport recently. "Much scientific study," he said, "has been given to the problem of headlight dazzle, but of recent years increasing attention has been given to the problem of adequate illumination of the road itself. "It may be that the next decade will see such material advance in this direction that on all the more intensely

trafficked roads there will be no occasion for the use of lights upon the vehicle, so that the approaching driver will see an oncoming vehicle not as a couple of spotrf of dazzling light with a black background, but as a dark silhouette against an adequately illuminated background. "The road driver of the future may hear traffic signals' on his car radio set, but I find it difficult to conceive that the wireless-controlled aeroplane, the automatically-controlled battleship target, and the driverless railway train

of the Post Office tube will ever be paralleled upon the highway." The theory that the most dangerous time of the from the motorist's point of view is between sunset and darkness was put forward by Mr. A. Maurice Bell in his presidential address in London to the Association of Public Lighting Engineers' Conference. "In the interest of safety, proper lighting should be made compulsory on all roads in and through towns, and on all main arterial roads carrying heavy traffic," he said. "In towns, in my opinion, headlights on cars should be prohibited, for it is now quite possible to obtain at a reasonable commercial price lighting quite sufficiently good to obviate the need for such aids," said Mr. W. J. Allbright. "The use of headlights should bo restricted to unlighted country roads."