I move amendment 34.
Section 46, sub-section (2) To delete in line 10 the word "thirty", inserted in Committee, and to substitute therefor the words "thirty-five".
This is not a Government amendment. I mention that fact because it appears conspicuously on the Order Paper and, on one occasion, Senator Douglas said he knew Senator Seamus Robinson was just a Government gramophone. On occasions when there is a division. Senator Seamus Robinson and I make a perfect record, but I am not the gramophone of the Government or the bus owners or even the public. I propose to appeal to that rather elusive quality—the commonsense of Senators. Senator Dowdall was responsible, in the first instance, for having the maximum speed for passenger-carrying buses reduced from 35 miles to 30 miles. Starting off, he harassed Senators by referring to two motor accidents in which he had been. He said he was happy that they were lucky enough on both occasions to be going slowly. He evidently realised that the accident was the result of their driving; he appears to have taken full responsiblity for the accident. The amendment has to do with buses but the Senator referred to two "motor accidents". I think it would have been only fair if these were motor car accidents, and not motor bus accidents, that the Senator should have said so, because what we were discussing were motor buses. The Senator goes on to refer, in his speech, to the danger of vibration. I do not know what the danger of vibration to which the Senator referred is—whether it is a danger to the people inside the bus or the people outside the bus or whether it is a danger to the roads. I cannot see how there can be any danger to the people either inside or outside a bus by vibration. The Senator's parting shot at the Minister was: "What he said about speeding-up is not viewed with any satisfaction by the people who have to foot the bill in cases of accidents". If people are not insured, they naturally resent very much having to foot the Bill in cases of accidents. But if the Senator was referring to the action of insurance companies, I am sure we would all like to be directors or shareholders in an insurance company which would collect premiums and be absolved by the Legislature from responsibility for accidents. I should have thought that the risk was the very element of insurance, that the risk was the raw material out of which dividends might subsequently be manufactured. I do not think that that altogether represents the attitude of the insurance companies. I know a case where a young woman, driving down town and looking around, charged headlong into another motor car, with the result that it was hurled across the street and struck an innocuous motor car on the other pavement with such violence that it sprang forward and entagled itself in a fourth motor car. She was had up but she was young and presentable; the Superintenrent of the Garda was young and, perhaps, impressionable and the representative of the insurance company was young and ecstatic. I shall not say anything of the judge, but that lady was fined an incredibly small sum and the representative of the insurance company stood up in court and said he regarded her as an excellent risk. Without risk, there would not be many insurance companies.
The debate on this question on the last stage was conducted on what I should regard as rather irrelevant lines. Senator Counihan said he was standing in a field about 50 yards from the road when a four-ton lorry passed travelling at about 30 miles an hour.
