SAFETY GUARANTEED

Evening Star, Issue 22146, 28 September 1935, Page 2

SAFETY GUARANTEED

f Written hv Mary Scott, for tho ‘“Evening Star.’]

Verily of tlic making of inventions there is no end, and much ingenuity is a danger to humanity. The latest invention, according to the English papers, is a car that is guaranteed to turn over several times and yet do no harm to tho driver. When it has quite finished turning Catherine wheels the passengers emerge cool and unscathed, and proceed to light a pipe or powder a nose according to sex. The reports of experts upon this pleasing contrivance all speak highly of the latest aid to painless motoring. Painless, that js, for the driver and his foolhardy passengers; but there are other aspects of tho affair. What, for example, are the emotional reactions of tho other users of the road? A car approaches you, driven apparently either by an inebriate or a lunatic, capsizes and rights itself, repeating the performance light-heartedly several times. Appalled at the spectacle, you pull up hurriedly—-unless, indeed, you be a nervous subject, when you probably turn an unofficial somersault of your own down the nearest bank—and hasten forth to render first aid or ring the ambulance. Instead of mangled bodies you find a party of people unharmed and delighted with their own and their car’s performance; if you are human you long to murder them; if you are excitable, you probably do so. Not are nerve storms the only ill results to be feared from this vicious invention; what of the unhappy lot of those who are not safely ensconced within the somersaulting car, but happen to be beneath it when the Catherine wheels begin? Wo all know how unenviable is the lot of the jockey whoso mount falls upon him; surely it would be worse by far to have a riotous car-hilariously turning somersaults over your unprotected diaphragm? There would be a nasty element of uncertainty. too, should you happen to meet this dissipated vehicle; in what direction exactly would the car land after its somersaults were accomplished ? We see cars scattering like hens before its onslaught, nor do wo picture many helping hands outstretched _to the genuine victim of a car accident in future; tho onlookers arc unlikely to remain long enough on the scene to ascertain whether the driver is a stunt artist or an outrageously bad driver in an ordinary car. It is probable, too, that a dozen accidents would result from the release of such a disturber of tlie peace —far more than if an occasional car'with a normal centre of gravity overturned with a bad driver. Moreover, you would have to practise to be a poor enough driver to manage to upset your car satisfactorily often to justify the invention; at once a premium would be placed upon bad driving, and the fools and the incompetent would bo more closely protected than ever. It is a pity, for a more ruthless treatment would probably z;e-' suit in a weeding-out highly beneficial to tho intellectual level of the next generation. Those who drive engines should be prepared to exercise due caution or abide by the consequences; much is said to-day of the risks 6f the road, but surely a safety device like this is but diverting them into another channel and causing the innocent to suffer for tho guilty. There arc many arguments in favour of dangerous living, provided always the danger is Shouldered by the person who incurred it. • “ Safety first ” is not a motto that trains heroes, and to make any device foolproof is but to encourage its exploitation by fools. To furn over your car and kill yourself may be unfortunate for you, but it may not be entirely unmerited; to make a car so safe that you may take any mad liberties with it is to endanger the lives of all other users of the highway. To take a risk is the prerogative of every individual; to involve others in our hazard is scarcely a high form of selflessness or of courage. Unfortunately danger is rarely nowadays confined to those who originally incur it; publicity is too great, methods of communication so rapid that all tho world is agog to see a now record broken, a hundred willing rescuers standing by to hasten to the succour of the adventurer. One accident may bring a dozen more in its train; yet records must be broken, risks taken if ive are not to become supine or decadent. Very different is the wicked folly of those who involve others in a cause that is already lost. Very frequently we read of men and women who deliberately choose to take their own lives in tho most public and spectacular way, and thereby cause danger and often loss of life amongst the unfortunate onlookers. It has always seemed a profound mystery to me why those who find life profitless and wish to end it cannot do so in the privacy of their own houses and their own bedrooms. There are many methods of committing suicide that need cause only the minimum of inconvenience to the rest of mankind. Yet, possibly in a spirit of perversity, possibly to vent a grudge against the world that they are leaving, more probably from sheer lack of imagination and wanton thoughtlessness, many unhappy people take their lives in tho most awkward and conspicuous way.

There have lately occurred in this vicinity two eases so unnecessarily painful as to rouse one rather to exasperation than to pity. A man committed suicide by hanging himself; he was old, friendless, unhappy; whether he had the right to end a life that no one, himself least of all, found valuable is a debatable question; certainly ho had no right to do so in a-way that caused danger and inconvenience and very nearly loss of life to, a number of bis fellow-creatures who had no desire at all to follow his example. For this unfortunate went to infinite pains and exertion to penetrate into the depths of virgin bush, choose a tree in an inaccessible and precipitous gully, and hang himself thereon, having first left a note informing a conscientious world where the corpse might bo found. It took six excellent bushmen many hazardous days of extreme discomfort to recover the body—and yet the only complaint I heard was a mild protest that “it was a pity Bill had gorn away there; there was plenty of trees nice and handy, and good trees too.” In the second case a girl committed suicide by jumping from a bridge, and cost the country the life of one wouldbe rescuer and very nearly that of a second. It all seems a curious waste. Is it the spirit of drama and selfadvertisement run mad and dogging our steps even upon the path to the grave ? The world is a topsy-turvy place at the best of times. Every day sees more dangerous inventions for the capture of speed on land 'sea, and air, and the next boasts the discovery of some counteracting device to minimise those very risks that the adventurous love to run. Wo talk of the sacredness of life and take infinite pains to safeguard that of eventhe most foolish and careless of motorists; and in the same paper that advocates the security of the individual we read of the resumption of the armaments race, of the invention of still more deadly pois-

onous gases, death rays, and bombs that may yet, mow down millions of useful, cautious, law-abiding, harmless fellow-creatures. What is the answer to the riddle?, -