SPEED AND SPLIT SECONDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 January 1939, Page 13

SPEED AND SPLIT SECONDS

'IS OUR HURRY GENUINE? All motion is relative, says Einstein; a fact it would be impossible to dispute. But the modern car is so cleverly designed that while speeding along at anything up to CO, 70, or 80 miles an hour its occupants may repose in quiet comfort, barely conscious of the swift rush of air outside or of the tremendous momentum gathered by the machine in which they are riding.

No doubt the mere fact that in a car we can hurry as much as we please without any appreciable personal exertion is frequently responsible lor inducing unnecessary haste. Riding comfort, smooth acceleration, easy control —all these improvements are affecting our conception of speed. To counteract these false impressions we should think in terms of feet and split seconds. For instance, take a car doing 40 miles an hour on a hills road, where there is a solid mass of rock rising on one side of the road and a sheer drop of hundreds of feet on-the other. Six feet to the right is disaster, and at that speed lift, is only a matter of a split second; to be exact, less than one-tenth. Or take a car cruising along a country road at 50 m.p.h. In places there are cross roads where the view of approaching traffic is obstructed by hedges or trees. Twenty feet from the cross road the motorist can see nothing of animals or traffic approaching the main road, yet within a quar-

ter of a second the car has covered that 20ft. and is directly opposite the cross road.

We are apt to think vaguely of G. E. T. Eyston’s epic achievement at Bonneville as something terrific —357 miles an hour. A far more realistic conception of his speed is obtained by stating it as 536 ft. a second.

In. most of the accidents due to speed, impatience, rather than a genuine need for haste, is the cause. After all. even if there is a genuine | hurry, what appreciable difference is made by cutting four or five minutes off a 20-mile journey? Such savings are never worth while. This does not mean that fast driving is always dangerous. A driver who realises what can happen within a split second at speed, and concentrates on his driving accordingly, choosing the proper time and place, is probably safer at 50 m.p.h. than some careless people at 15 m.p.h. The dangerous speed drivers arc those who, lulled to a false sense of speed by the smooth, silent running of the modern car, respond too easily to the temptation to increase the pressure on the accelerator, forgetful or ignorant of the potentialities of the tremendous momentum gathering under them. Too often the remark is heard after an accident. "We didn’t seem to be going fast." There is the whole point. Deception, or in other words, relativity obscured by skilful engineering.

For safety’s sake the relativity theory in regard to motoring could be carried further, so that at all times speed would be related to braking efficiency, road conditions and all other circumstances having a bearing on convenience and safety.

Thinking of speed in terms of feet a second, instead of miles an hour, would help all road users to a clearer

perspective of road conduct, and would prove a powerful influence in restraining that impatience which is the root cause of many accidents.