Page 106 - Bulletin 9 2005

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Poor road conditions were widespread at that time, and in the Kalk Bay area too:

The Wynberg Times Seaside Supplement, 10 January 1903:

If the roads were kept in anything like decent order by the Divisional Council, motor cars
and bicycles would swarm between Muizenberg and Kalk Bay on Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons, as was indeed the case before the roads got into their present disgraceful
condition. Now it is quite a rarity to see a bicycle outside the village limits, and
automobiles are a thing of the past. The Divisional Council’s assertion that the roads are in
fair order is simply in direct opposition to the truth, and proves that their officials either do
not know their business or else cannot tell a bad road from a good one. Whichever may be
true, the result is the same; and it need hardly be said that the almost impassable state of the
roads is causing untold injury to the business of the whole of the commercial community in
the southern suburbs. Everyone admits that Divisional Councils are clumsy anachronisms,
and that their days are numbered. And nobody knows this better than the members of the
Cape Council, which is about the clumsiest and most useless of the whole lot. It almost
seems as if they were determined to do as much harm as they possibly can, and leave things
in the worst possible pickle, by the time they are kicked out of office.

With the slow increase in numbers of motor cars on the roads it was necessary to revise the

speed regulations, and the new Regulation No. 527, of 2 January 1903, stated:

No person shall under any circumstances drive a motor car at a greater speed than eight
miles per hour. If the weight unladen of a motor car is three thousand three hundred and
sixty pounds, and does not exceed four thousand four hundred and eighty pounds, he shall
not drive the same at greater speed than six miles an hour, or if such weight exceeds four
thousand four hundred and eighty pounds at a greater speed than four miles per hour:
Provided that whatever may be the weight of a motor car, if it is used on any street to draw
any vehicle, he shall not under any circumstances drive it at a greater speed than six miles
an hour.”

By early 1903 it was believed that automobilism had taken root in the Cape Peninsula,

although there were still very few cars on the roads. To further promote motoring the
Automobile Association, on 7 February, organized the first “Motoring Tournament” ever