BETTER DRIVING

Shannon News, 29 June 1928, Page 4

BETTER DRIVING

HOW TO IMPROVE.

'MOTORING GOLF."

For the first year or two every novice motorist should Aake a practice of reviewing his/, or .. her; every drive.

It is good to go further and make a note of every incident and point discovered as a result of such a casting back of the mind, while . memory is fresh". Every pilot analyses his flying. That is the way man discovered how to make many manoeuvres in the air which seemed impossible even to the designers of the machines when they were first contemplated. Yet to-day they are the commonplace aerobatics. It is only by continually accustoming the mind to foreknow what to do and how to do it almost mechanically in given hypothetical circumstances that any control procedure can begin to become subconscious, which is necessary to safety alike in flying and in car driving. If motorists in general would only make a practice of bringing their experiences again in retrospect, even those who have acquired and standardised faults would begin to remedy them. That way dangerous driving would be reduced to about one-fifth of its proportions to-day. Many of our best drivers have learned their skill from such reviewing, and from a practice called, jokingly, "motoring golf." With "all-high-gear" ears now popular, this "golf" may not appear essential, but it can teach much to owners of cars which need to be changed down or are hard to change down.

Motoring golf is best carried out during the morning drive to business, and its rules simply are to make a change down just before every corner of the route, and a change up after each turn.

Bogey for the game is to regard every change down and up as being made both correctly and silently for the full journey. Any faulty or noisy ehange is a lost "stroke."