TRAFFIC PATROLS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21360, 1 June 1939, Page 14

TRAFFIC PATROLS

Cameras Added to Equipment Idea Behind the Move By Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON, May 31. Photography is now to be utilised in the campaign against traffic accidents. The Minister of Transport, the Hon. R. Semple, announced to-day that a numb.r of the Transport Department’s inspectors are to be equipped with cameras for photographing traffic violations. < To begin with they will be stationed at blind bends and everyone cutting the corner will have his or her photograph taken. “Cameras will help to protect the g-eat body of 1..w abiding motorists from the irresponsible minority,” said Mr Semple. “Those who habitually cut corners and take bends so fast that they cannot stay on their owm side of the centre line will be the quarry of the candid camera. The Inspectors’ photographs will in the r-ain be shot in the vicinity of danger points. Inspectors will not be concealed—a mai-mai will not be used. Law-abiding motorists have everything to gain from the cameras. “A detaiI’d 1 ’d examination of 5000 accidents shows that failing to keep to the left of the centre lines is easily the most common cause of death and injury on the roads. When combined with speed these accidents are particularly deadly, and more often than

net it is the careful and courteous party that comes out worse. In one accident of this type during last year three entirely blameless persons were killed in an effort to avoid a head-on collision. The driver who is con-

fronted on a bend by a car on its wrong side will sometimes make a sharp swerve, with a result that the car crashes oil the road. He has only his own werd to support a claim for damages. “Passing on blind bends and cutting corners may have such serious consequences and are so f—que..; with a reckless few that e-erything possible must be done to step them. Enlarged photographs will be of great assistance to magistrates, and will prevent the time of the court being wasted in long arguments regarding the reliability of witnesses.”