page 56

Intemperate Blame

Under the above heading the “Taihape Daily Times” deals trenchantly with the level crossing situation. Its editorial reads as follows:—

An amazing and certainly most intemperate and inexcusable attack on the railway authorities is published in an editorial in the Wanganui morning paper of to-day. The subject of this insensate attack is a level crossing fatality which occurred last Tuesday near Wanganui, and which most regrettably, was attended with loss of life. With these elementary if tragic facts burning in his mind, the writer of the article in question proceeded to apportion the blame, and stated that ‘the red roll of railway tragedies is a tragic record of the incompetence or callousness of the authorities in regard to ensuring the safety of the public.’ This is a very serious statement to make—so serious, in fact, that it invites sharp resentment not only from the railway authorities, but also from the higher authorities. When and where has a fatality occurred in which the circumstances even remotely justified a charge of incompetence or callousness being levelled at the authorities? The task of making all the railway crossings in New Zealand, or even the majority of them, absolutely ‘fool-proof’ is, at the present time, an impossible one. The authorities have cudgeled their brains for years past to devise some means of making motorists and others take ordinary precautionary measures when approaching crossings, but in vain. It would probably not be an exaggeration to say that most motorists, if they were in a mood to be quite frank, would admit that, at times, they take risks at crossings that are not fair to the railway authorities. Perhaps in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, these risks may be taken with impunity, but it is in the hundredth that death wins, and then, according to the writer of the article under review, the railway authorities must shoulder all the blame. But the climax of the scathing indictment had not been reached, for the writer was evidently in the grip of a fine frenzy and worse was to come. ‘All the excuses in the world,’ the article states, ‘will not eradicate (erase) those innumerable names from the red roll of the crossing or restore to their relatives the men, women and children who have been done to death.’ This is nothing else but mischievious nonsense. When have the authorities been guilty of any act of deliberate and premeditated neglect that would justify the cruel charge implied in these words, ‘done to death?’ If the ‘Chronicle’ knows of them why does it not declare them? Moreover, if it knows of a practicable plan whereby crossing fatalities can altogether be obviated, why does it not announce it?