HELPING MOTORISTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 886, 1 February 1930, Page 5

HELPING MOTORISTS

EDUCATIVE POLICY IN UNITED KINGDOM AUCKLANDER’S IMPRESSIONS “The education and not the prosecution of the motoring public is the policy of the traffic police in the United Kingdom.” So says Mr. Martin L. Wilkins, of Auckland, who has just returned from a 12 months’ trip abroad, during which he motored 5,000 miles in the United Kingdom. The New Zealander frankly admits he made mistakes while negotiating his car about the streets in London and elsewhere, and observed that he was not the only one that did so, but the traffic police did not take the names of errant motorists with a view to prosecutions. They stopped the motorist and quietly explained that “You should have done so and so.” The travellers appreciated the tolerance of the traffic officials and tried to heed the addvice. “In Auckland a motorist is very lucky if he can get through the City without being presented with a summons as a reminder of his journey,” commented Mr. Wilkins. In fact, after his experiences elsewhere, Mr. Wilkins begins to think that there is some basis for the claim that there are too many traffic regulations in New Zealand. With experience of driving about London and being held up in traffic jams, where scores of vehicles, three abreast, would be halted to allow even greater numbers of other vehicles to pass across a roadway. Mr. Wilkins now laughs at the talk about traffic problems here. “Mostly imagination,” he said.