QUICK THINKING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 716, 16 July 1929, Page 6

QUICK THINKING

RECORD EXAMPLE QUOTED A novel and very interesting query is raised by a correspondent, a wellknown driver of high repute, says a London motoring writer. Were it otherwise one should think a mistake had been made in regard to the facts stated. “What is the record example,” he asks, “of quick thought and action in the handling of a car in an emergency? I ask because of something I did yesterday—which 1 can hardly believe today. “I was driving on an open road In the country at about 40 m.p.h., when a rattle of the offside rear door told me that the lock had slipped from the fully closed, to the safety catch position. “The road being clear, I leant back to open and slam the door, but the handle slipped out of my hand through the force of the wind Somehow or other I did three things—still at about 40 m.p.h.—in a fraction of a second. “First I recognised that the door would be badly damaged by being blown back with such force. Secondly, I visualised that a smart dab of the brake would ’decelerate’ the door movement; and, thirdly, 1 got that brake dab in before the door was fully blown back—and it was not damaged.” If one also accepts that the facts really happened as he believes them to have happened, then it must surely be a record example of quick thinking and quick acting in a motoring emergency. But there may be “extenuating circumstances” to this drain on one’s credulity. For example, driving instinct may have warned him initially that opening a rear-hinged back door was dangerous in the circumstances; and that same instinct may have prompted him unconsciously to let the accelerator pedal go, and place his foot on the brake pedal, so that it was there ready, although he did not know. But in any case it is an instructive example in quick thought and action in car handling, and, possibly, a "record.”