STREET ACCIDENTS

Otago Witness, Issue 3958, 21 January 1930, Page 67

STREET ACCIDENTS

LONDON, January 14. A conference on street accidents in London, which was convened by Mr Herbert Morrison (Minister of Transport) began to-day. Mr Morrison, who presided, said it was inevitable with the development of modern transport, that the risk to the public, including pedes trians, should be increased. They might hope, however, that children who were growing up in the midst of fast moving motor traffic would be able to adapt them selves to the new conditions better than the old generation had been able to. He recommended to the careful and sympathetic study of the conference, the Roa 1 Traffic Bill, which he hoped would be passed in the present session of Parliament. It was hoped, he said, to make the law very much more up to date, and he believed the Bill would do much to enable the Ministry of Transport to take further steps to prevent the spread of accidents in Great Britain as a whole. He attached very great importance to the provision in the Bill which will enable the Ministry to publish a code of road conduct. He said: “ We do not need a dogmatic code, but a substantially authoritative code worked out by technical officers of the Ministry after consulta tion with all the representative organisations, so that the public generally shall know how to conduct themselves on the | King's highway. DAILY TOLL IN LONDON. LONDON, January 14. The death roll in London streets is growing so gravely, an average of four being killed and 190 injured daily, that a big traffic conference has been opened t > discuss the problem. Four hundred ex ports from every public body in the huge London area are attending. FIGURES FOR THE UNITED STATES. CHICAGO. January 14. The National Safety Council has announced that the deaths due to automobile accidents in the United States during 1929 totalled 31,500, in the 31 States. More than half the victims were pedestrians. The total deaths Were 13 per cent, more than in 1928, while motor vehicles registration increased only 8 per cent.

PARADISE LAKE ON PIGEON ISLAND. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —A short time back, I read with much interest in your paper Sir Frederick R. Chapman’s letter, which upheld the changing of the name of the above. Sir Frederick says there are possibly many places name d after the pigeon, whicn would be confusing. I am inclined to doubt this. 1 have just looked through a big American Gazetteer, dated 1863, for the name pigeon, as applied to various aspects of the world’s surface, and theie is not one. Even if there are several by this time there is only one Lake Wanaka, so that it would be impossible to confuse the various other places, even if they exist, with Lake Wanaka. The naming of the cliff above Paradise Lake after Lord Jellicoe I am sure no one would object to. and most people would regard it as the correct thing to chisel the name out of the rock. I was visiting Wanaka when the new names cropped up. and I could not find one person who upheld them, and a little mild surprise was expressed that the local Domain Board did not object to the change. I spent a couple of hours with a number of tourists, and this change of names cropped up, and not one was found to be in favour. One elderly gentleman from Christchurch said he sent his protest to the press, and he was pleased to hear that I had done likewise, and intended keeping an eye on the change in the future. The new names do not sound well, would be difficult to remember, and would not roll off the tongue very well. The name Paradise was given to the lake on Pigeon Island by the “'Vagabond *' tiie late Julian Thomas, the eminent newspaper writer, who visited Pembroke in the early ’eighties and wrote a series of beautiful articles on the district as well as a special one on Pigeon Island, all of which appeared in the Australasian. He came before the first steamer, the p.s. Theodore. was launched. i and was rowed up to the island by the late John Chalk, the eminent writer, and another man, and they had

a rough passage owing to adverse winds During this visit to Wanaka there was an excursion to Pigeon Island in an oil launch, and I went up. There is a track up to the lake that is much too wide, and therefore cost too much. There is a track round the lake which makes it too artificial. The fiat piece of ground al the old-time woodcutters’ camp was planted with pinus insignis and willows, which drowned it. and kit no room for sports. It would have been fitting if rare native shrubs were planted on it. There is also a patch of gorse that looks about 12ft high. Some little time after the Theodore was launched, when the advertisements were signed by Hedditch and Smith, the late Mr Robert M’Dougall, storekeeper, chartered the steamer for a day and treated a large number of residents from Wakatipu to a trip to Pigeon Island, and the party, no doubt being anxious to do the honours, renamed Paradise Lake Lake M'Dougall, but it never took on, ami Paradise it always remained. It is a bit disadvantageous that I have not Sir Frederick’s letter before me to give more details, having lent the paper to a friend, and it never came back, so that I am depending on memory. During the last 50 years a large number of notes from Wanaka have appeared in the press, and if these had been saved, pasted in a scrap book, and kept in Pembroke, much valuable information would have been preserved dealing with the history of the district while it was in the making. Not many files of a newspaper are kept, so that if one were lost the various items would be lost. It will be remembered that the Lake County Press office was burnt to the ground, and with it went a valuable lot of Wanaka history.—l am, etc., Richard Norman. Lawrence, January 16.