TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS

Southland Times, Issue 23379, 10 December 1937, Page 9

TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS

To The Editor

Sir,—lt is to be regretted that the Hon. R. Semple’s good intentions to lessen motor accidents have so far not produced better results. According to a paragraph in The Southland Times on December 7 there have been 31 traffic accidents in Invercargill alone between March and November., Five people have been seriously injured and two killed. I feel satisfied that there are three main causes for this cruel state of affairs—first, liquor, secondly, loose gravel and speed combined, and, thirdly, arising from the worst piece of legislation this country ever indulged in, the stimulus to drinking which has arisen from the 40-hour week. It is the old adage over again: “Idleness finds much for idle hands to do.” I think all spirituous liquors should be sold by chemists and that purchases should be restricted to medicinal doses prescribed by doctors. This should at once remove the biggest factor causing death on the roads. A man’s efficiency as a driver is at once impaired even though he may be far from drunk or intoxicated, and it is sad to reflect how many today are lying on beds of pain or have passed on for ever because of drinking by drivers. How often do we read of cars skidding in loose gravel, yet they go on skidding. As an old road contractor will you let me say that the gravel today being put on our roads is both too much and too clean. No consideration is given to any form of binding substance. The remedy should be to tighten up the sale, of liquor and to put in bitumen all approaches to bridges and all sharp bends. We are living too fast and too thoughtlessly, and we never know when the day or the hour will come when one or more of our loved ones may be brought home dead or maimed for life. All this could be so easily stopped if we took a more humane stand. We could be just as happy if there was not a drop of alcoholic liquor in this country more than had to be used as medicine. A lot of people would have more money to spend on safer enjoyment, and those coming after us would miss. nothing, for what they knew nothing of they would never miss. Liquor has ever been a degrading menace to humanity at large, but since the advent of motorcars it has become a greater menace than ever before.—Yours, etc., HUMANITY. December 10, 1937.