LEAVES FROM THE INSPECTORS NOTEBOOK.
Page 16
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Standardizing the Policeman. Crewe and Liverpool Trials. Licence Limitations.
IREAD with interest a few weeks ago a plea on the part of a very well-informed writer that we should not attempt to overdo the craze—with which we were rather badly bitten immediately after the war—for standardization. The writer, amongst other paints, made the one with which we are to some extent familiar, namely, that excessive striving after standardization inevitably kills specialization and individuality.
Standardization; as a matter of fact, has made relatively little headway in the commercial-vehicle ' industry if we except such things -as tyres, plugs, threads, wheel diameters and so an; nor is it likely to until we have thoroughly covered all the possible. outlets for our manufacturers. We have, as yet, barely touched the fringe of them.
At the risk of countering my fellow-scribe's plea for less infatuated obeisance to the fetish of standardization, I venture to suggest the need for it in rather an, unlooked-for direction. I suggest, in ' short, the need for the standardization of the police man. ' .
Driving about the country recently, the writer has reinarked over and over again the need for insisting that the police authorities throughout the provinces as well ac in the Metropolis .shall nave a standardized code of signals which the re aresentatives of the law Should use without variation in connection with their traffic-contrel duties.
It is appreciated that the police authorities in provincial oentres do not feel themselves in any way bound by the practice of the. metropolitan authorities, even in traffie matters where the latter are admittedly pre-eminent in their achievement. But they must admit, if they think about it at all, that where they have evolved a series of signals from their own inventiveness they should at least have had concern for what was being done elsewhere in the country. Nowadays, so much motor traffic is of the through variety that one can forgive the driver who admits entire confusion in his. efforts to interpret what a. Manchester constable means by horizontal and vertical waves of the arms, when he.has only just been " called over the coals" for not having understood an entirely different set of signals -which he has encountered in Coventry or Ipswich.
Let us standardize the policeman, therefore—at any rate, in respect. of his traffic-control signals. It should he a simple 'enough thing to do. The code in use in London is as good as any, in the writer's humble opinion, whereas Some of those in the provinces, while being perfectly well understood by men constantly driving in the districts, •a,r relatively unintelligible and often misleading to the stranger.
Crewe and Liverpool Trials.
I should like to .preclude my few notes thia week by dealing ivith one or two direct and indirect queries that have been put -to me in my capacity as "The Inspector." In that interesting and highly dis• Cursive pageful of hints and queries known so widely as " One Hears," last week " The Inspector" was challenged as to why he had ignored all industrial vehicle trials prior to 1907.. It is not my intention to ignore them nor to minimize their relative import &lice from the pioneers' point of view, but the people who took part in the pre-1907 commercial trials were very few, . c20
These trials were the first instance in which a largo organization was set up to deal with these more or less competitive tests. The 1907 trials were strictly comparable, too, in that respect, with the 1,000 miles' trial and reliability trials of touring car fame. No, I did not, in suggesting ,a commemorative junketing for those who took part in the 1907, trials, forget the Crewe trials and the Liverpool trials, although so many other people have forgotten them. It is all very ancient history, of course, and principally interesting only to those who took part in them, but, if we reach the stage of arranging a commemorative -dinner or other meeting of those who took part in fhe 1907 trials, it would certainly be most appropriate if those comparatively modern officials were honoured with the presence of the seniors, who could still spin yarns of whatwe did at Crewe and Liverpool." I do not think that we should go back farther than that,. however.
Licence 'Limitations in Brighton and Eastbourne.
Then, again, I Want to acknowledge the courtesy of Mr. A. W. Mackenzie, of Southdown Motor Services, Ltd., who recently addressed a letter to me in my anonymous capacity, giving some very interesting particulars with regard to local licensing regulations, abut which I wrote some weeks ago. I referred to one local authority which had decreed that they would only issue licences for automobile public stage carriages which were of the electric or petrol-electric types.
Mr. Mackenzi•e reminds me that Brighton made such a regulation in 1910, although that was not the town I had in mind. Brighton, however, soon withdrew its decree. The reason for its issue was to force the local omnibus company to buy current from the Corporation electrical undertaking, and it was at the time assumed that they intended so to regulate the charge for Oirrent to the omnibus company that losses on the tramways could thus he conveniently camouflaged.
Mr. Mackenzie also states that, at present, it is impossible to give an efficient service in and out of Eastbourne on Sundays because the Corporation will only allow the time of departure on the Sabbath from Ea.stbourne to be between 10 and 16.30 a.m., 2 and 2.30 p.m., and at 5.30 p.m. The latest vagary of the Council is that they will sanction an 8.30 p.m. departure if the 5.30 one is abandoned. The original restriction was to placate Sabbatarians, who were afraid of residents running away at church time, but what this has to do with the 5.30 and 8.30 services it is difficult to fathom.
Finally, Mr. Mackenzie tells me:— " The inconsistency of these restricted efforts is emphasized by an application which my company received front the governing body for the district of the Wesleyan Church, asking the company to run a Sunday service on a 'certain route at such hours,that it -would 'enable them to' Bend 'preachers out to all the Villages in time for the morning service; and bring them back after evening service. The present restrictions of the Eastbourne Corporation do not affect their own ratepayers, but ,hit the residents of the country distriCts very badly:" Siirely an excellent example of the retrogressive effect of local licensing limitations which I have. strongly urged should themselves be strictly limited in application—from a national standpoint.