The Undue Use of the Hooter.
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We expect to hear that frequent use is made of the lumber in suburban areas, at applaaches to corners or cross roads, but we think its use is badly overdone in many cities. London. residents are the greatest sufferers, and it is high time that steps were taken to prevent the undue use of the hooter by taxi-drivers.
London, during many decades of horse-drawn traffic, when noises due to the hoofs of the animals and to the iron-tired wheels of the vehicles which they drew produced a continuous roar, got along very well without hooters. The human voice was sufficient to be beard even above the din of those days. Now, and worst of all during the hours that workers are supposed to be free to snatch a few hours of sleep, with rubber-tired traffic in the ascendant, every taxi-driver appears to regard it as incumbent upon him to hoot steadily, for half a minute or more on end, in any street which makes a junction with any other or leads to an intersection of thoroughfares. these men are, in a sense pi+operly, thoroughly obsessed with the statutory obligation that is put ',pan them to give audible warning of their approach, but they apparently are wholly oblivious to the equally important obligation not to render themselves a nuisance. )Ne appeal to owners of taxicabs to do all they can in the interests of the amenities of existence in many a London residential street and square Thousands of people arc severely and unnecessi.rdy distressed and stressed by the culpable lack of consideration which is uniformly displayed.
The Cost of Contingent Alcohol.
Tt was rumoured a few months ago that the Alcohol Research Committee of the Imperial Motor Transport Council wanted ,C10,000 a year for its invesligation and other purposes. The announcement is now made, presumably with the concurrence of the Committee, that The appeal is started under an initial handicap, in that educated opinion amongst motorists is on the side of the benzoles and other motor spirits which are obtainable from mineral sources. It is, therefore, viewed largely as a superfluous effort, and as one which should be seen to a conclusion by its nromolors. We cannot imagine, for example, the S.M.M.T. being ready to pour out, any of its money over this fetish of alcohol, especially when the results of the recent Governmental investigations in the U.S.A. are studied. When cheap alcohol comes info being and use, it is not the motorist who will gain anything, unless in certain Overseas countries. Motor owners in the United Kingdom will have no fuel problem to confront them three years hence, and they will be buying petrol or its substitutes freely at Is. per gallon. We do not object to the alcohol campaign, but we dispute several of the basic premises upon which it is sought to found it. Bridge Law : a Splendid Win. The directors of Piekford's, Ltd., the great carryim and forwarding company, are to be congratulate( upon the splendid success which has attended thei action against the Great Northern Railway Co. Thu problem of weak bridges has been enormously re lieved, if not essentially removed, by the decision o Mr. Justice Warrington which we report at length ox page 296 of this issue. So clear and well-founded if this judgment that we have little fear of its beint upset in the event of appeal. The interruption to which heavy-motor traffic is sub jected in various parts of the country, by reason a the insufficient strength of many railway and cana bridges, has been a very serious difficulty for hun clreds of owners, and particularly for owners of tku heaviest types of commercial motors. We dealt, ix our issue of the 5th February last, with the decisiot of the Court of Appeal in the case of the Woreestei Corporation against the Sharpness New Docks ark Gloucester and Birmingham Navigation Co., but it the course of our comment upon that case, we had te point out that it was only to be regarded as a ster in the right direction. The original powers of the Sharpness Canal Co. contain a clause which require it to maintain the bridge over the canal "in sufficiern repair," whereas the original Acts of many railway companies do not contain any such words. The decision of Mr. Justice Warrington is of the utmost importance for two main reasons. It effectually disposes, subject, of course;.to the result of a possible appeal, of the claim of the railway companies that they can put up notices under the Heavy Motor Car Order, restrictive in respect of axle-weights, and be relieved thereby of the necessity to do anything whatever to keep the bridges up to strength or in repair. The decision positively scoffs at the view that railway companies can relieve themselves in such fashion, and indicates that any such intimation of a state of insufficiency can only be of temporary fotce. The judgment states that the Court sees no ground for the contention that heavy-motor traffic can be left out of the question, and the bridge left to look after itself. The other fundamental point of the judgment is, that the Court Niolds there is no provision in any of the sections of the Railway Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845, amounting to an exemption in favour of a raLway company from its obligation to inamtain bridges according to the nature and extent of the traffic upon and to be expected upon the highway of which the bridge forms part. The judgment, it will be observed, concludes with a declaration that the defendant railway company is liable to put the bridge into such a condition that it will be safe for the passage of traffic upon and to be expected upon the highway coming up to such bridge, at either end thereof, and so to maintain the same, whether the traffic aforesaid shall or shall not be prohibited from passing Over the bridge by the Locomotives Act, 1861, the Locomotives on Highways Act, 1898, the Motor Car Act, 1903, or any of such Acts, or any regulations made under such Acts, or any of them. BZTags