COURTESY ON THE ROAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 580, 5 February 1929, Page 6

COURTESY ON THE ROAD

Playing Safe on the Highway and Playing the Game in Town

AS motorists, are we becoming a race of road-hogs to whom courtesy, safe travelling, and reasonable speed are not worth bothering about? The question arises from the experiences of careful motorists—and there are a few left—who motor for .the pleasure it brings and who are not always hurtling over the landscape with an unbreakable schedule.

Things have reached a desperate point when motorists must average round about 40, 45 and 50 miles an hour in conveying the family to the sea-front on a fine Sunday. Yet it is a common sight to see these drivers on the road any fine Sunday passing everybody else, raising the dust, and generally placing themselves and others in a position of danger. Such drivers have cylinders where their brains should he. If speed, that is unnecessary speed, were their only fault, it would not he so bad. But they “cut-in” on other vehicles and dart out again; they throw the shingle up on to the windscreens of other cars; they pass on corners other cars going in the same direction; they pass vehicles so that three are abreast; they are a menace on the roads because of speed improperly applied. It is drivers such as they who make speed-traps necessary, and keep ambulances busy. Another deliquent on the highway Is the confirmed dawdler and the “smart Alec” who dawdles and then races ahead when another driver wishes to pass him. Dawdlers who travel In the middle of the road or near It are a nuisancec. Their proper place is on the extreme left of any road. The man who dawdles and then speeds up when the other fellow tries to go past is a cause of crashes, and an enemy to the proper spirit of the highway. It is unlawful to pass a vehicle within 30ft of an intersection, but drivers tear past right on an interesection. Drivers have a habit, too, of hanging too close to the car ahead and often not right behind so that the two cars obscure the road for a third driver coming up behind. The horn Is not sounded by many drivers when they wish to pass a car ahead, and arm signals are not given by drivers when about to pull out from a line of cars. Some drivers whose cars have rear mirrors never use them, but the major

offence is not to have a mirror at all. Thousands of cars are without them. Fewer drivers on the road would be peeved if more drivers had those mirrors and consulted them from time to time. Quite a number of drivers are unaware of the dangers of shingle judging by the way they act. Immediately they pass a car they swing round in front of that car and throw shingle about. But sideslip is one of the worst features of the manoeuvre. 31” a swerve occurs more than one car is likely to be involved. One can only surmise that hundreds of drivers forget their city manners when they are in the country. In the city motorists as a class are particularly discourteous, thoughtless and careless in driving and in leaving their cars. Very many women and quite a lot of man never think of getting out of a car on the side away from the traffic. One driver in 50 ever thinks of halting his car at a reasonable distance from the car ahead. Drivers think nothing of scraping or bumping the car ahead. Drivers leave their cars on corners and within 20ft of corners, thus creating danger for others. They speed up to corners and rely entirely on the man on the left giving way. They sound the horn too much. There is nothing more irritating to a driver just near a corner than to hear the blast of a horn sounded by the car behind. Such horn-blowing is confusing to the man in front, and does not help the second car in the slightest. A real motorist can be picked out by his use of the warning device, just as anyone knows the greenhorn blasting his way over an intersection. He thinks it helps, hut it doesn’t. The double-banker is another curse of the streets, for obvious reasons: so is the man who “cuts” corners, and never gives the recognised arm signals. j. Motorists should cut out the foolhead business and play safe.

It is sometimes necessary to remove a valve from a side by side valve engine, and there is no special tool for doing so at hand. A length of stout wire should he procured, and wrapped round the body of a sparking plug or detachable head stud on the cylinders. The end of the loop should be just a little higher than the bottom of the valve spring. A screwdriver can then be inserted in the loop, which will form a fulcrum or pivot for the screwdriver when compressing the valve spring.

A parking place is where you leave the car to have those little dents made in the wings. Within a few years it is probable that very few makes of four-cylinder cars will be left on the roads. In America the vast majority of makers are specialising on sixes, though the few remaining factors turning out fours produce an enormous number of cars. In England, though most of the cars actually produced are fours, about half the manufacturers are either concentrating on sixes or are in a transitional stage of building both types.