toundabout
Passenger Training
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN Just about every sub- ject which the human mind is capable of learn- ing is nowadays taught in some accredited in- stitution: weed-killing, poetry, business manage- ment, even the art of reading; but there is one subject of constant moment to an increasing number of people that gets very little attention st all. It is high time somebody started a course In Applied Motoring.
Pure motoring is what the driver does to make the car go forward, manipulating the self-starter, engaging and disengaging gears, shouting at other drivers and so on. Applied Motoring is all the other things that go on at the same time, like finding the way, losing the matches, knitting, radio-twiddling and singing part-songs.
There are hundreds of useful arts to learn, such as how to stop the children sticking their lollipops in the driver's eye, how to make sure they neither saw their way through the sunshine roof (put them in the boot), get their tiny fingers i'edged into the window-frame or, having Mowed green fields, accessible forests, large :owns with modern well-equipped hotels to pass :hem by, urgently demand to be sick in a slightly ;ongested suburb. There is also the business of ;etting the driver to stop for a picnic by the side if a pretty stream at 12.30, as first suggested, ather than on a slag-heap at ten to three, which is vhat usually happens. The trouble is always that ,y the time he has slowed down, you are past it; Ind there is only one known way of getting over his difficulty. Shout 'Help—I'm going to be sick.' [he car will skid to a stop without even the thinking time' allowed before braking in the Highway Code.
Then there is the art of smoking in cars. There are ashtrays and windows to pop, the cigarettes aut into the eyes of oncoming, cyclists, but the real trouble is lighting cigarettes for the driver. Having first, of course, found the cigarettes in .what is laughably known as the glove, compart- ment (in reality the duster, broken sun-glasses, thocolate, Kleenex, gas bill and dead biscuit :ompartment). The general rule- should be that you look either at the mouth you are.sticking the cigarette into, or watch the road till it is- clear, Ind then proffer the cigarette; what is commoner s the attempt to do both—which usually results n holding the cigarette just out of reach while the lriver's eyes fill with smoke.
In America, those who thunder from their lulpits about Sin have usually given up .saying on't sin : they just say don't park. And the echniques of evasion deserve years of study. Up al now we have had the key-lost-in-my-handbag ;immick (you keep your head down and hold yourself ready to spring as soon as the car stops). I smell something burning' is not only a corny solution, but one that should be used with cau- tion; just occasionally something is, and even if there is a cigarette end between you it seems churlish to mention it. If the road safety people have their way, cars are going to become much more unsafe from this point of view: mothers of young daughters are going to have to do a good deal of hand-wringing- to decide- which sort of safety matters most. They will be sending out their girls with the advice : unfasten your seat belt, dear, if you don't want a bumpy night. And of course there is the question of getting in and out of cars (you are always supposed to proceed rear first, legs together—a formula which invari- ably lands you—if the man is no parker, let alone a prince—with your feet in the gutter and your hands on your escort's shoulders).
Map-reading is a science, too, especially that sort that goes with a determination to avoid main roads and savour the beauty of the countryside; the passenger never takes her eyes off the road- book for a second, so complicated is the short cut. There ought, too, to be maps printed with four alternative versions of each map, the names facing east, west, north and south. It is my mother's constant complaint that all the maps are printed for driving to Scotland, not for driving south again—a fact which may account for the innumerable times in which every woman says 'turn right—no sorry, left.'
There is also the quite large range of things which, particularly in London, can be done even by drivers during the time in which the car is not moving—which is usually. Girls can cer- tainly paint their faces without trouble; and one of the prettier sights of the road is the convulsed fury of the man who has seen the paint being put on, and is waiting to whizz scornfully by, who discovers she had her eye on the red light as well as the rouge and gets off the mark as quickly as he does. (1 have a—literally—country cousin who reckons that the one way of making absolutely certain she gets up to London in thirty-five minutes is to decide to paint her nails at the red lights—she gets green ones all the way.) There are, it is true, hideous occasions on which applied motoring suddenly includes motor- ing, just as girl missionaries occasionally have to perform operations in the jungle with hurricane lamp, rusty pen-knife, prayer book, etc.; these are the occasions when one's companion is no longer up to driving; a girl has to operate an en- tirely strange car on such meagre instructions as can be gleaned by questioning, the dialogue s going : She: 'Darling—where is the third gear?'
He: (groans).
But usually it is clear whether you are or are not motoring at any one time. Too clear some- times : the best piece of Applied Motoring I ever heard of was a non-driver who allowed himself 'a to be driven to Glyndebourne by a girl in full evening dress; but the stares of incredulous passers-by got him down and somewhere around Purley his nerve broke. He got out and bought a square of black cotton to put his arm in a sling.
The only trouble about a course of Applied Motoring is that at the end of it it would probablY dawn on the graduates that there are some forirs of transport—e.g. trains—where you can paint your nails, eat, read, type (until the guard gets there), write letters and get on and off with per' feet propriety and comfort—and also arrive rather sooner. As a way of getting from Aix to 0 motoring has its advantages; but for passengers it is a powerful waste of time.
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