The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1929 SLAUGHTER ON THE HIGHWAYS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 672, 25 May 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1929 SLAUGHTER ON THE HIGHWAYS

MOKE persons were killed or injured in vehicular accidents on the roads of Great Britain last year than the total losses of the allied forees against Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo. “On that fateful day” (to quote an historian), “there were killed on the allied side 4,172; the wounded numbered 22,378.” The casualties on British highways during 1928 totalled 6,138 killed and 164,838 injured. That is a grim record, but it is a trivial tod compared with similar experience in the "United States where slaughter on the highways, like everything else in that efficient country, is on a record-breaking scale.

Commentators on Great Britain’s alarming record have observed that the most extraordinary thing about it is that these enormous casualties are received with apparent unconcern by the public. “They awaken no agitation against motorists and are accepted as incidental to the development of road traffic.” It has been suggested philosophically that the explanation, no doubt, is that motorists are no longer, as of old, a class apart; the poor are in it as well as the rich.

Meanwhde, the increase in the number of casualties on the roads rises at the rate of more than two deaths a day and 44 injured victims of popular progress. Of course, the motor-car alone is anything hut responsible for the heavy toll on life and limb. Horse-drawn vehicles and horses still work much havoc among unwary pedestrians. They caused or were involved in no fewer than 220 deaths and 4,924 other casualties. And it is fair to mention that the Prince of Wales is not the only hunter to fall off a horse. Then the ordinary pedal cycle also is a notorious slayer. It had an astoundingly bad record last year, being responsible for 429 deaths and 26,483 casualties in road and street accidents. As for the motor-cyclist, he is the Herod of the highways, killing the first-born in many families as well as many others besides. Motor-cycles killed 1,383 persons and injured 38,684. It has been said that “the lad with his first motor-bike, his girl perched temerariously on the pillion, is a sympathetic figure, the knight-adventurer of our day.” A lot depends on the difference in the point of view. The bruised and battered pedestrian may not always be expected to look with sympathy and romantic admiration on the noisy adventurer of the night and his temerariously-perched lady. Cynics say, as they always have said, that as long as there are fools in the world there will be accidents. Quite so, but it looks as though the fools are paying a heavy penalty for their folly. Pedestrians soon will be in the minority, and if they do not keep a sharp look-out for the rushing majority, they will be cut down to timid and rare phenomena. Perhaps something good will come out of the growing hope that the great transformation of road-traffic and transport must develop a new type of individual, more alert and alive than the old. The law as to the survival of the fittest is most active on highways and thoroughfares, and nowhere else is the rule about the devil taking the hindmost so ruthless in its operation. This, no doubt, is inevitable in an age which fills the thoroughfares with fast streams of electric trams, motor-buses, motor-cars, motor-lorries, motor-bicycles, pedal cycles and last and most exasperatingly worst for everybody concerned with safety on the road, the gamin’s trolley. In such circumstances the wise pedestrian must learn to take care of himself or perish in the dust. The only apparent alternative is to procure a ear and, with the best possible intention, be in the ranks of the slayers rather than to be among the slain. Fortunately, many anxious folk and some administrative authorities with unlimited, if still unrealised, power are doing all they can to modify the slaughter on the highways, and are introducing systems of control and all sorts of devices for safeguarding life on the roads. Others, with a naive philosophy that denotes a delightful aloofness from the common herd of men, note that there are compensations for motor accidents and gains that must not be overlooked. As one writer sees it, “where onr grandfathers moved in tens we move in thousands. The machines of our time have made Cornwall kin to Caithness.” In other words the textile worker or bricklayer who, a generation ago, had to he content with Bolton, is now able to appropriate York Minster and Loch Lomond as parts of his personal experience. The motor-car or motor-cycle” thus may be not only a recreation hut an education that puts “the apprentice of today on a footing with the lordling of the past.” A pleasant thought, if one can afford a car or to possess one without worrying about inability to afford it, but there ought to be a safe lane or two somewhere for the pedestrian who may he more reflective than foolish. As things were and are, a soldier at Waterloo had a better chance of life than a civilian without a car on the king’s highway .