Road Transport Topics in Parliament
Page 39
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By Our Special Parliamentary Correspondent
SPEED THE CAUSE OF ACCIDENTS?
I N the House of Commons last week Mr. Watkins brought forward a motion " that this House views with concern the continued high rate of road accidents in spite of existing measures, and therefore calls for more effective action for the public safety." After the debate the Minister of Transport offered to support the motion, which was unanimously agreed to.
Mr. Watkins, in presenting his arguments, criticized a monthly bulletin published by the British Road Federation, in which it was endeavoured to prove that road transport was safer than rail transport. A misleading argument based on a mathematical fallacy was used, he said. The number of railway engines was compared with the number of cars on the road, and each was divided into the number of deaths' respectively caused by them. The only true test was to base arguments on passenger miles.
He considered. that the chief cause of accidents was excessive speed. He did not believe that better road surfaces, elimination of blind corners and improved lighting systems would reduce accident figures. These measures promoted higher speeds thus increasing the likelihood of accidents. He advocated reducing the 30 m.p.h. limit to 25 mph., and urged enforcement, He mentioned the case of a coachjourney schedule in which 15 hrs. 19 mins. were allowed for the run from London to Edinburgh. Deducting for stops, the average speed was over 28 m.p.h., to maintain which large parts of the journey must be carried through in violation of the laws.
He supported the permanent affixing to vehicles of mechanical arrangements to prevent exceeding the limits. He suggested better indications of restricted areas and the greater variation of times of lighting-up at the beginning and the end of summer.
ACCIDENT RESPONSIBILITY.
SECONDING• the motion, Mr. Leach gave statistics of court convictions and from them showed that little or no blame attached to motorists for 6,561 road deaths. When an accusation of negligence had to be brought, he said, the safest person to accuse was a corpse. According to the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, of 6,000 children involved in accidents in 1936, all but 500 were to blame for their deaths or injuries. Were children 2-6 years old to be held responsible?
CONVERT RAILWAYS TO ROADS.
THE present position was attributed by Mr. Macquisten to the House of Commons itself, which, when the motor came upon the scene, allowed it to go on to the road among cattle, sheep, human beings, and horsed vehicles, mixing them altogether. No matter what speed regulations were made, such
mixing of traffic would not work. The true remedy was to make proper motor roads with one-way traffic dedicated solely to Motor traffic.
The railways should be got rid of because they were absolutely unnecessary. We should convert the railway tracks into speedways for motors, and lay down roads for motors only. This should have been done at the beginning.
The House, he declared, was rotten with railway directors. There seemed to be Members who objected to the defence of road traffic. The right thing to do was to promote its safety and to develop it. Our railways were an obsolete system.
COMMERCIAL MOTOR DRIVERS THE SAFEST.
iNTERESTING accident statistics !were quoted by Mr. Benjamin Smith, who said there were 507,256 commercial vehicles on the roads of which the drivers were responsible for only 15.1 per cent. of fatal, 18.3 per cent, of nonfatal, and 16.2 per cent, of all accidents. Where vehicles or equipment were held to be blameworthy, it was found that 32.9 per cent, were private cars, 17.4 per cent, motorcycles, and 29.5 per cent. cycles, making 83.8 per cent. attributable to these sections.
Regarding the number of vehicles involved, 33.2 per cent, were private cars, 11.3 per cent, light motor vans, 29.6 per cent, cycles and 13.6 per cent. motorcycles, a total of 88.8 per cent. That revealed where the trouble lay.
IGNORANCE OF FACTS.
SUPPORT was given by Mr. Poole to the plea for a segregation of traffic, and the view that the commercial motor-vehicle driver to-day was the safest on the road. He would, however, like to see legislation limiting the total length of load, and enforcement of the speed limit, especially for trailers. One found sometimes, he said, a vehicle with one or two trailers travelling at over 20 m.p.h. with the trailers swaying and presenting difficulty to anyone desiring to overtake.
There was already a limit on the length of the load that could be carried, but that limit should be made much lower than it was. " Heavy traffic, he continued, was finding its way on to the roads because road transport had been allowed unrestricted freedom of competition. It had been allowed to select its traffic, and to charge what it liked.
VALUABLE WORK IN LANCS.
THE Minister said he found no difficulty in accepting the terms of the motion. The problem of the roads was increasing at the rate of 1,000 new cars every day.
For the first 10 months of this year,
the deaths were 140 less and the injuries 2,235 less than for the corresponding period last year. He joined Members in wishing that the law were more often enforced, or the penalties greater.
There had been an interesting development in Lancashire, namely, a concentration of mobile police on accident-prone roads. For the six months ended September 30, the reduction in accidents throughcut the country was 5 per cent., but in Lancashire it was 46 per cent. It might be that concentration in this particular direction had meant some slight slackening in others, but there was a most valuable report in the hands of the Ministry from the Chief Constable of Lancashire.
On one particular road, accidents had been reduced by 73 per cent. Such an achievement showed that there was more hope of tackling this intractable problem than he had had before this information was placed in his hands, SPEED NOT THE CAUSE SAYS BURGIN.
I N view of the fact that 70 per cent.
of road accidents occurred in daylight, he thought Members were pursuing a wrong course in attributing them to lighting-up time.
With regard to time-tables of express vehicles, it had been suggested that schedules were based on infringement of the law.
A duty of the Traffic Commissioners was closely to scrutinize the time-tables of the long-distance coach services, and to satisfy themselves that it was possible to do the journey, including stops, safely within the 30 m.p.h. limit.
He was not aware that speed schedules were a source of accidents on the coach routes to Scotland. Moreover, he could not subscribe to the view that the real cause was speed.
He wished it were so simple to diagnose one particular cause. No less that 76 per cent, of all accidents happened in the areas where there was a speed limit. They occurred where there were great agglomerations of people going about their ordinary business, and the accidents happened by a mixed contribution of carelessness in different degrees from different classes.
TRANSPORT EMERGENCY MEASURES.
SEVERAL questions were asked by Sir A. Knox as to the action taken by the Ministry on the plan put forward by Associated Road Operators three years ago for the use of transport in emergency. Was there, he inquired, any organization in the Ministry to consider preparation for an emergency?
Capt. Austin Hudson, Parliamentary Secretary, said the organization in the Department for dealing with transport in time of war, after consultation with the Road Transport Industry, prepare,i a scheme of which brief particulars were published on September 22.