"Another nail . . ."

Sir,

Since we have seen situations created by people of the same laissez-faire outlook as Mr. Farina, whereby lives have been seriously endangered through the inability of ambulances and fire-engines to reach private houses, we are not likely to agree with him.

If, as you suggest, the action of which he complains represents yet another nail in the motoring coffins of the Farinas of this world then, with respect, I suggest that the use of the hammer is long overdue.

Long experience of the problem and its solutions leaves me with no sympathy whatsoever for the citizen who believes that the world was made for the motor car, and who will obstruct a road with the object for which he has assumed responsibility rather than walk 200 yards to a garage or parking place.

The fact that he may not be able to obtain a garage is not to be accepted under any circumstances as carte blanche to leave his car in the road—lit or unlit. Would Mr. Farina, fifty years ago, have bought a horse without first ascertaining if he had anywhere to keep it? Would he then, having tardily discovered the omission, have tethered it to the nearest street lamp through the night?

Whether Mr. Farina and his ilk like it or not, Tokyo is pointing a stern finger in that one cannot purchase a car in that city without first providing satisfactory evidence that one possesses or has at one’s disposal a suitable off-highway place in which to house the vehicle.

I would suggest, as an enthusiastic motorist and a staunch champion of the cause, that any other approach is completely anti-social and selfish in the extreme.

Carl O. Pound – Llanfrechfa.

[The real culprits are surely the local councils who permit new houses to be erected without garages or off-the-road parking, knowing that in due time it will be almost impossible for the affluent occupants of the nineteen-sixties to resist buying personal transportation of some sort. And to ban parking outside town houses, in front of which cars have been allowed to stand for many decades, is a bit too tough, Mr. Pound. However, the day may come when such parking will have to be banned, but, remember, at present a garage is a luxury, on which rates are charged. And a horse can be led through gates where even a Mini cannot pass.—Ed.]