THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1937 SHARING ROAD EXPERIENCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22723, 8 May 1937, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1937 SHARING ROAD EXPERIENCE

Mr. Semple's latest move as Minister of Transport, the publication of a monthly analysis of road accidents, should prove influential in the cause of road safety, a cause in which he has the fervent support of every citizen. The campaign for better road behaviour, like every other campaign, is apt to lose force and momentum, with the result that drivers and pedestrians lapse into the old careless ways, unless the consequences are kept constantly before the public. The monthly returns should have the effect of sustaining vigilance. The toll of deaths and injuries cannot but carry a stern admonition, and the analysis of accident causes should prove educative to road users as well as offering guidance to traffic authorities. There is good reason to believe that such good effects have been produced in Britain, largely owing to the vigorous policy of publicity pursued in the last two or three years by the Minister of Transport, Mr. Hore-Belisha. He was able to inform the House of Commons recently that, whereas the number killed and injured per 1000 vehicles rose from 94 in 1931 to 99 in 1934, it fell in 1935 to S8 and to 85 last year. The cheers that greeted this announcement were an expression of gratitude for the improvement brought about by Mr. Hore-Belisha's efforts to awaken the public conscience and to constrain and teach adults and children to use the roads more carefully and skilfully. Mr. Semple is moving toward the same objective, and it is natural that he should use some of the same methods tried and proved by British experience, within the limits set by the smaller means of the Dominion. All will wish that as time passes he may be able to produce as favourable results as Mr. Hore-Belisha.

Not that the British Minister is by any means satisfied with the progress made or the position as it stands. Indeed, no justification exists for complacency either in Britain or New Zealand. In both countries traffic is a lethal agent comparable with minor wars or major diseases, and, like the latter, it is a continuing, cause of death and disablement. It is instructive to place the Dominion's first monthly return of road casualties alongside that for February (the latest available) in Britain, as follows: —

Killed Injured Seriously Slightly Britain . . 461 5,452 10,039 New Zealand 13 33 229 These figures do not admit of comparison because there are so many variable factors, including difference in population of some 30 to 1, in traffic densities, in classification of injured, and difference in seasons. In any case, the period of one month is too short to work on. Nevertheless, it is clear that Mr. Semple is faced by a problem substantially the same as that facing Mr. Hore-Belisha, and can with advantage draw on the British Minister's larger fund of accumulated experience. Mr. Hore-Belisha has recently received the results of the "most elaborate analysis of road accidents hitherto compiled," containing particulars of 100,000 accidents. The most striking fact brought out was that 40,000 of the total, or 40 accidents out of every 100, occurred at intersections. So, in advising local authorities on the " safety highway of the future," Mr. Hore-Belisha states that junctions should be reduced to a minimum and spaced not less than a quarter of a mile apart; that the highway should be made independent of local roads, being carried over or under them by subways or bridges; and that it should have separate tracks for each class of user (pedestrians, cyclists and motorists). Such specifications, with the addition of pedestrian guard rails, are completely out of the question for New Zealand —the cost would be prohibitive—but they do contain some useful pointers for Mr. Semple. The same applies to other conclusions emerging from the great British, analysis. Of the 100,000 accidents, no less than 3700, or 3.7 per cent, were attributed to pedestrian or driving vision being masked by parked motor-vehicles. Here is an impressive commentary on the vexed question of street parking—one that drew a hornet's nest about the British Minister's ears when he sought to apply the lesson in London's congested thoroughfares. But these are only two instances, one large and one small, of the guidance offered by a comprehensive yet painstaking examination of road accident causes. Mr. Hore-Belisha has incorporated his Ministry's digest of the whole in a detailed memorandum on the construction and lay-out of roads recently circulated to local authorities. No doubt there will be much that is applicable to New Zealand conditions. On his part, Mr. Semple has given Mr. Hore-Belisha a lead on tests for car fitness. In Britain these have just been instituted, and so far apply only to passenger or goods vehicles. The Minister was appalled to find that, out of 560 specially observed brake tests, 550 were found to be less than 30 per cent efficient. He was troubled to think "what must be the condition of the nearly 2,000,000 private cars not subject to test." Mr. Semple should shortly lave accumulated some New Zealand 3xperience on that point. He is also noving to collate local road statistics on the British model, and is visely sharing them with the general public, on whose interest and co>peration his 'success with safety neasures must largely depend..