ELIMINATING NOISE.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 March 1935, Page 6

ELIMINATING NOISE.

The example set by the British Ministry of Transport in entering upon a campaign for the reduction of noise on roads might well be followed in New Zealand. The recently-announced intention of the British transport authority is to establish a fixed standard of maximum permissible road noise to which all vehicles must conform. Combined with the “silent traffic” zones at night and the substitution of trolley vehicles for tramways the new proposal will, it is hoped, materially reduce offensive noise without increasing accidents. Much of the objectionable noise on Taranaki streets is caused by motor-cycles, which in some parts of New Plymouth, particularly at night in the vicinity of steep hills, are a public nuisance. "Although I cannot tell you the mortality due to noise— I have never seen anybody directly killed by the blast of a motor-horn—-that the incidence of nervous disease is partly due to noise I have no doubt whatever,” said Lord Horder, the eminent physician, in a speech at Birmingham. “We are sometimes told: ‘You people are hypersensitive not to be able to enjoy this din.’ That is a foolish argument. Our nervous system is very resilient; it is extraordinary what the healthy nervous system can put up with and adjust itself to; but why should it be asked to expend that amount of nervous energy for a needless thing? It is a waste of nervous energy and, God knows, modern life cannot afford to waste its nervous energy. There are so many other directions in which it must be expended.” It would appear, particularly in regard to motor-cycles, that a considerable step in the much-needed reform could be made at the manufacturers’ end. Tlie fact remains that steps to abate the nuisance are long overdue, and Britain’s pioneer effort will one day be regarded as a notable milestone in the history of social legislation.