The Truth About Motors

NZ Truth, Issue 1216, 21 March 1929, Page 19

The Truth About Motors

WILL SURPRISE YOU

" Slower The Speed, The Faster The Traffic" CONTENTION OF AN AMERICAN Colonel Waldon, a director of the Detroit Automobile Club and a member of the Rapid Transit Commission of that city, takes exception to the view frequently expressed that high rates of speed lessen congestion by keeping traffic moving, at a more rapid pace. V

HE considers that 15 to 22 miles an hour, is tho most satisfactory and 1 fastest speed m a line of traffic. • "The speed at which the greatest number of vehicles can pass a given point," says "Colonel Waldon,' "is approximately 15 miles per hour. "Eighty-nine out of a hundred would say that the higher the speed the greater the capacity, whereas . the opposite is true above ' this particular speed. .;■.-»-. "At sixty miles per hour, -only 60 per cent, as many vehicles will be able to pass the same point as could pass were all travelling at • 15 miles per hour. • "The. reason is that at each increase

i m vehicle speed there must be an ml- ; crease m the safe- distance between] vehicles. < . ' "With each increase m speed there [' is consequently a lesser number of vehicles occupying one mile ,of the single traffic lane - . "With the line moving at sixty ihiles • per hour, it is easy to see that if more ' vehicles are introduced, thereby lessenI ing the interval between cars, the speed of all cars must slow down to what is safe for the new distance that separates each car from the other." However, It is .difficult to see how Colonel Waldon's reasoning would work out m practice, for at, say, 30 miles an hour, with modern four-wheel brakes, the safe distance between cars need not be so very great.