ROAD SAFETY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23002, 3 October 1936, Page 14

ROAD SAFETY

AMERICAN METHODS PREVENTION RATHER THAN PROSECUTION A SCHOOL FOR OFFENDERS (Special to Daily Times) AUCKLAND, Oct. 2. In view of the often reiterated intention of the Minister of Transport (Mr R. Semple) to reduce the number of traffic accidents, the policy followed by the automobile associations in America makes interesting reading. A statement of the view of those bodies on road safety and the best way of ensuring it was made by Mr Samuel Brest, managing director of the America Automobile Association and Automobile Club of Southern New Jersey, who arrived by the Mariposa. Mr Brest stressed three points, “ The general opinion of the American States is that it is better to prevent accidents than to punish offenders," he said, “that is education rather than prosecution. Applicants for driving licences have to undergo a fairly severe test, while in regard to motorists intoxicated in charge of a car the American associations are determined to root out this evil.” One practice he recommended was the establishment of what were called traffic violation schools. An offender might be sentenced to attend a course at one of these instead of being fined a relatively small sum. The lesson of the school was remembered long after the fine would have been forgotten. The schools were run by the Police Department, and at them was taught the need for safe driving and an adherence to the traffic laws. Commenting on safe driving speeds Mr Brest said that in some States the speed limit on the open roads in which the houses were 100 feet apart was 40 miles an hour. “We believe that on the whole this is a little too slow,” Mr Brest said. “It is not necessarily a fast speed that causes an accident. In other States there is no speed limit and the only charge is that of reckless driving. This, of course, may be harsher in its application than the imposition of any speed limit. The tendency is rather to. increase the speed limits than to lower them.”