Road Transport Lighting Bill.
Page 68
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
The Editor, TEE COMMERCIAL MOTOR.
Sir,—References are appearing in the Press to the action of the Automobile Association in holding up this Bill, and I feel it is, therefore, desirable publicly to explain the position. The question is not one of politics, but purely of public safety.
A fundamental principle of the 13111 is that all doubletrack vehicles should show two white lights to the front, obviously to Indicate the width of the vehicle. One or two points in the Bill were not in entire accord with our views, but there was at no time any idea of blocking its progress until—at the eleventh hour— certain interests proposed an amendment to exempt all horse-drawn vehicles engaged in agricultural operations from the obligation to show two white lights to the front, thus destroying to a substantial extent this important principle of vehicle lighting.
To appreciate the seriousness of this one has only to realize that the exemption would enable heavily laden and slow-moving vehicles to travel long distances to market or other places with only one front light. Moreover, Hansard makes it perfectly clear that the amendment was not discussed on its merits,
B42
but merely accepted on the ground that it was usual to give concessions to agriculture, The Association is fully alive to the need for avoiding any unnecessary burdens on agriculture, but the public safety aspect of this question seems to have been entirely overlooked, and the Association would have been lacking in its duty to the motoring public had it failed to take all possible steps to prevent this grave legislative error. Arrangements were accordingly made through the medium of the Motor Legislation Committee for the necessary opposition to this proposal.
It is twenty years since the last lighting legislation. Presumably we are now legislating for another fifteen or twenty years ahead. Yet, despite the enormous growth of mechanical road transport and the general speeding up of traffic throughout the country, it is proposed to grant a dangerous and quite unjustifiable concession of this kind without discussing it.
The economy of one oil lamp is surely of negligible importance as compared with the value of human life.— Yours faithfully, STENSON COOKE,
London. Secretary, The Automobile Association.