THE MOTOR WORLD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16455, 17 June 1921, Page 3

THE MOTOR WORLD.

NEWS ANO NOTES. IBy ‘RADIATOR, Tile -big race of the year, the Grand Prix. will be held next month in France, and only four nationalities arc represented—England. America, France and Italy. The French ears have been very successful in the past, aud the Germans have always had the Benz and Mercedes in the race. The Italians have had a fair amount of success with tho Fiat, hut the English Sunbeams were the biggest surprise in ITH3. when they ran Ist, 2nd and 3rd- The Americans entering this year will be. watchedwith interest. They have beer, doing some great .racing over there, wbilu an the others baye been off the scene. The number of cars registered in Auckland has been so great for 1921 that tho number plates allowed for the I period just ended have been exhausted, | and any one taking out a. new number | has to wait until one is prepared. | The first Auckland motor show is i likely to come off early in tho coming ! spring (writes “Torque” in the Auck- ' land ' Star.”) Several sites have j been chosen as good, but nothing defiu- | ilc lias been decided yet, although the i “heads” are busy with the idea, and t with the efforts of the trade and the various associations, it should Ihe made a great success. At the Hamilton Winter Show, the, motor-car exhibits were a credit to the show, and to the exhibitors themselves. The crowds around the cars showed the enormous interest taken in motor-cars, and anything new that was to be seen. Om» particularly good ' exhibit that attracted the crowd most was a car working and showing all the moving parts with the. aid of mirrors. Those critics who have said that flying is dangerous will hr confounded by i the statements recently issued by the i British Air Ministry with regard to the [ progress of civil aviation. Tbe figures j are extremely satisfactory as regards i the safety of flying, and even if the | number of passengers carried and the i amount of goods transported bv air i are not as high as they might be, the J figures have no relation to the actual | safety of commercial Hying. From I May, 1919, when civil aviation comi mcuced, until the end of December. | 1920, British aircraft- Hew over one million and a Jialf. miles and carried out over 62,000 flights. During the period nearly 107,000 passengers were carried and ncarlv J7o tons of goods were carried on the Continental service. But the. most satisfactory feature of the whole- report is tint fact that | out of o total of forty-six accident* excluding third party accidents, Iwcntv of these did not involve any injury to personnel. Of the remaining twentysix. eight were fatal and eighteen nonfatul, the number oi passengers killed being eleven, and those injured mimbo.ring sixteen, whilst eight pilots were killed and fourteen injured. This 1 works out at the rate of 0.10 passengers killed per thousand carried and 0.15 passengers injured per thousand carried. In other words, during the early days of civil aviation, when one might reasonably expect a fairly high percentage of accidents, the passenger’s chance of death was only one in ! ten thousand. This rate will bear ! comparison with any other method of • transport, and even if the older forms can snow a better casualty rate, it must be borne in mind that they have been in existence, for many years. whilst commercial aviation has been in existence for about eighteen months.