CARS THAT CRAWL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 220, 6 December 1927, Page 6

CARS THAT CRAWL

CAUSE. OF ACCIDENTS. DUTY OF DRIVERS. The following article from a Home paper has been sent to me by a Fendalton motorist 2 Do any of the people who denounce motorists for recklessness and excessive speed realise that the most prolific cause of accidents is not fast driving but slow driving? Dangerous loitering is almost the worst evil of the roads to-day. The really bad smashes, most of which occur at cross-roads and bends, are generally due to foolhardiness or bad judgment, but for every one of these there are a hundred minor accidents, too trivial to be chronicled in the news, yet real and unpleasant enough for those involved, and the ultimate cause of considerably more than half can, or could be, traced back to the excessively low speed of some car in the vicinity. It is also the chief causa of those **bad manners” of which we motorists are always accusing each other nowadays. Go out at a week-end on any of the old main roads that have not yet been straightened and widened—the LondonSt. Albans road is a good example—and you will see dangerous loitering at its fell work. Sooner or later you will find yourself joining a little procession, funereal in speed if not in aspect, and if the road is narrow and winding, as the St Albans road mostly is, you will spend the next twenty minutes In nerve-fraying, temper-raising efforts to get past. Probably by the time you have succeeded there will be enough mutual hate engendered between you and the processionists to start another war. SLOW MOTION. At the head of that procession and the fons et origo of all the trouble is a driver who can’t or won’t go faster than 20 or 25 miles an hour. He may he a novice, he may be conscientiously running-in a new car, he may prefer slow motion—it is all one to his victims. At first he ambles along alone, and experienced drivers who catch him up pass without much difficulty. But before long he acquires a tail—a driver who can’t or won’t exceed 30 miles an hour and who drops down to 25 rather than attempt to pass. Then up comes a third car, moderately . fast,. moderately well driven. Its driver is for ever edging out to pass and drawing back again as a bend or an approaching car comes in sight. And now the stage is set for a firstclass display of “cutting-in,” ‘‘roadhogging,” “speed mania.” It may end in nothing worse than hard words and murderous thoughts, but it is just as likely, if nerves or brakes are imperfect, to produce crumpled wings, dented radiators, perhaps a serious smash. The man who get the kicks in these circumstances is invariably the man who “cuts in.” He is held to blame because he was too “impatient.” But it is asking a lot of human nature at the wheel of any modern car to pin him down for mile after mile at the tail of a procession moving at half the speed his car can comfortably and safely maintain. HIS DESERTS. The loiterer at the head of the procession never gets his deserts. The worst that comes to him is a smashed tail-lamp or dented panel, and whereas he ought to be summoned and fined lor driving to the public danger nobody 1 ever so much as tells him he is a ! nuisance. It is no use his claiming the rights and liberty of a free-born Englishman to drive at his own chosen pace. Even if he keeps well in to the near side (which not all loiterers do) he is not doing his whole duty by his fellow motorists, for on narrow roads that will not take four lines of vehicles he is obstructing the traffic, which is an offence known to the law as well as a form of inconsiderateness. On the arterial roads there is plentv of room for the novice, the nervous, and the potterer. On the older roads I busy times they are. like “carriers” i ot disease germs, unwittingly dangerous.