1915: Automobile Associations

January 5, 2022

By AHNZ

It was not The State that started marking New Zealand roads with distances and names but free people voluntarily. In 1915 the Automobile Associations of Auckland and Canterbury were hard at work. Government just came along later, took over, and take credit for work already done. As per usual.

“Motorists are deeply indebted to the energetic road sign campaign which has been so successfully carried out….owing to the efforts of the Association, a large number of water-races on the main roads have been bridged over, a work which will add infinitely to the comfort and safety of motorists in I general. The Association has also, at a very considerable expense, subsidised the publication of a road map of Canterbury, which is generally considered to be one of the best ever issued.”- Press, 27 December 1915

“The transition from motoring club, for the sharing of travel pleasures and improvement of motoring conditions, to wide-ranging service organisation developed during the 1920s. First to appear were road maps, the backbone of AA service throughout the world. Then accommodation handbooks and touring assistance, technical advice, and road signs — New Zealand is one of the very few countries in the world where the AA, not the Government, is entrusted with signposting.” – AA Road Atlas of New Zealand (1974)

Statists so often ask ‘how shall we build the roads’ as if free people couldn’t provide New Zealand’s infrastructure. As a Libertarian I used to insist that we could. As a Libertarian Historian I have learned not only that we could but that we did.

Everywhere you go, even today, much of the public furniture and parks are provided not by government but by free people. Check the inscription on the picnic tables and shelters all over New Zealand and the monuments and walls. More often than not they are provided by the Lions or Rotary clubs not central or even local government. The Automobile Associations, then the amalgamated Automobile Association (AA,) mapped our country and provided and/or added value to rest stops along the way. They also provided their own rubbish bins and collection service long before the government took over.

The AA road signs started being replaced in about 1987 by the government. Now there are few left except some survivors out in the country yet to be replaced. I guess locals either tear them out preemptively, to save them, or else the government comes along and takes the faded signs away. I wish I could find out some details about how the nationalisation of road signs occurred. Probably part of Labour 4.0’s policy of changing so many of New Zealand’s institutions rapidly that nobody would be able to keep up and oppose them. Probably an act of then Minister of Transport Richard Prebble. It’s difficult to find out more because most history books are too old and the internet too young to find information about the decades in between without diving into a newspaper microfiche. Besides which, accessing library archives is very hard to do in the current year because if they’re not locked down a user needs to do their work in a muffling face mask and, often, have had multiple government placebo injections to gain entry.

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Image ref. www.aa.co.nz

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