The Coach Kills
The recent conviction of a coach driver for dangerous driving, following on the death of a girl cyclist on the Rochester road, draws attention once again to the dangers of the careless driving of heavy vehicles which have already been the subject of correspondence and articles in the Spectator. Any speeding on the part of a vehicle as heavy as a coach—quite apart from being an infringement of the statutory limitation of their speed to 30 mph—is likely to result in its becoming out of control and will probably make it impossible for the driver to pull up in time to avoid pedestrians or other traffic. Add to this the eagerness of Coach passengers to end their journey and the immensely heavy traffic on the coast roads during the holiday season and it may seem no wonder that this type of vehicle is accident prone.' The obvious remedy is cart on the part of the drivers and strict insistence on a high standard of safety by the companies who employ them, but in the final analysis the law can most efficiently be enforced by mobile police patrols along the arterial roads. Unfortunately, not all police forces have accepted the principle of mobile patrols as the most effective deterrent to .bad driving.
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