Road Traffic: Its Control and other Problems

Date01 April 1947
DOI10.1177/0032258X4702000208
Published date01 April 1947
Subject MatterArticle
ROAD
TRAFFIC:
CONTROL
AND
OTHER
PROBLEMS
II9
A good working scheme is to permit the following games and
machines and no others:
(a) Traditional games with prizes in kind, such as darts, houp-la,
shooting, coco-nut shies, etc., and including a later addition
to fairs, the various games with balls rolled or thrown by hand
into receptacles, numbered or otherwise.
(9) Machine games, including pin-tables, which are played either
, for amusement only,' or which return for a win either the
player's coin, or the ball or balls, and nothing more.
Games which should not be permitted
include'
cranes'
and their
variants (real money-spinners these), games such as ' Roll a Penny,'
in which coins are used as counters and in which the prizes are cash
of varying amounts, 'spinners ' which are plainly gamblers and which
infringe the Betting and Lotteries Act as well as the Gaming and
Betting Act, and all cumulative games where the lure is a big prize
really worth having.
If
these rules were adopted as a rough guide nationally, much of
the harassing character of gaming and betting enforcement would be
avoided. Showmen would be more satisfied, even though, as they
know only too well, the real ' gamblers ' do make money more easily
than the traditional games.
The
showmen are on the road again and
there is a boom in betting and gaming; so that something needs doing,
and it is desirable that it be done now.
Road Traffic: Its Control and Other
Problems
By
INSPECTOR
S. W.
SLOCOMBE
Newport
(Mon.)
Borough
Police
THE Romans understood the art of road-making and recognised
the principle that astraight line is the shortest distance between
any two points. Unfortunately the majority of our roads are
but
survivals of former foot and cart tracks. Most of these followed the
easiest route for horse and foot traffic rather
than
the most direct line.
During the centuries, these tracks have been widened and re-surfaced
to their present condition.
They
are, indeed, a bad heritage.
Over a century ago, when the coaching highways were in full use,
Parliament recognised that the roads must be kept free of obstruction
to enable the public to derive the fullest convenience of their use,
and introduced legislation to that effect in the Highway Act of 1835

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