It’s easy to forget how important motordom was to the 20th century and how it was really seen as the progressive way forward to modernity.
This 1955 film clip from New Zealand is a four-minute feature on safety improvements for the one hundred mile highway between Porirua and Wanganui. Looking to eliminate road accidents, the Transport Department and the National Road Board experimented with several novel ideas-like putting a stripe down the highway to delineate which sides the car should travel on, measuring curves for speed and using “microwave” radar detectors. Take a quick drive down the “guinea pig highway” when the car was king by accessing the video here.
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
This is actually from 2013. They’re a little behind the times in NZ.
This video is hilarious. The Flying Squad … the Guinea Pig Highway … you couldn’t make this stuff up. And the all male traffic department sitting around smoking; pontificating – what a bunch. They were all graduates of the PCB traffic school: Parking, Car King, and Barking for more. They just need a mascot. How about a Bobble head.