Vigilance the Remedy.

The growing evil of the increasing number of accidents caused by motor vehicles and the seriousness of the position as affecting hospital accommodation and finance, is commented on by a writer in a recent issue of the “Lancet.”

Although essentially descriptive of conditions in England at the present time, the comments of the writer are not without point in relation to New Zealand and the necessity for continuous Safety propaganda:—

“The pressure upon hospital beds and hospital finances caused by the rapid increase in the number of motor car accidents has been growing in severity,” says the writer. “The enormous annual output of motor vehicles of all kinds, forbids the hope that the pressure has reached its peak, and we may therefore confidently expect that the difficulty will become still more acute. All over the country, hospitals, large and small, are embarrassed by the necessity of admitting casualties to already overcrowded wards and by the cost of treating patients who are often so seriously injured that their tenure of beds, sorely needed for local purposes, is prolonged.

“In many small hospitals, at the approach of the week-end, when the maiming is at its height, medical officers have to hasten the discharge of the local patients for whom the institution primarily exists, to be ready for injured motorists, mainly from a distance. To say that this is a grotesque state of things is to put the situation mildly.”

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