TEST DRIVING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 170, 11 March 1932, Page 7

TEST DRIVING

USING PSCHOLOGY TO ASCERTAIN FAULTS. An interesting apparatus has been designed overseas hy a professor' of Psychology with a view to providing tests to ascertain the faults which contribute to poor driving of automobiles and road accidents. The motorist taking the test seats hhnself in a motor car body in the laboratory. He has the usual steering wheel, gear, and brake levers, accelerator and clutch pedals to work. Out in front the driyer sees a min,iature landscape painted on canvas with a road winding across it, curves, cross-roads, and hills. The landscape revolves tow$,rd the driver on two rollers. On the road is a toy car. This toy is guided by a meehanism connected with the steering apparatus of the car in which the driver sits. The test starts. The driver starts in low and ehanges gear as in ordinary driving. As the landscape, operated hy a variable speed electric motor controlled by the accelerator, revolves on the rollers, the driver mnsi keep' the little car on the right side of th'e road. As he ehanges into second gear and then into high, the car moves faster — or rather, the landscape revolves under it more rapidly. Must Pilot Car. The driver must ke'ep the car in the road and must obey signs which drop into position at intervals, just above the roadway. He. has to turn sharp curves, for which he must slow down. He must shift to low gear on a steep hill and speed up on a straight road. H'e may have to stop at an ar.terial highway. He reverses, turns sharp corners, sounds his horn when the signs command. And all the time he must keep the tiny car on the road by operating the steering wheel as he would if his own car were actually moving. When the driver is piloting the car over the road an appartus to the left of the landscape is recordiiig, with annoying accuracy, the numher of times the driver is off the road, the length of time off the road, and the total time required for. the trip. The trip eonsists of a certain number of rotations of the cahvas landscape, which is automatically timed. The trip may be long or short as desired. There appears to be common sense in this novel application to ascertain why some drivers get tangled up in traffic, and involved in road accidents, while others drive for years witho'ut trouble or accident. Maybe the time will come when motorists applying for their driving . license will he subjected by the police authorities to a test on a machine of the nature described.