Motoring
SPEED—SAFE AND DANGEROUS
THE County Surveyor of Oxfordshire, Mr. G. T. Bennett, made an interesting statement last week. In the course of his report on a four-year-long inquiry into the 162 deaths resulting from 148 road accidents, he said that excessive speed could not be proved to have been even a contributory cause in more than one case. He went on to say that there was no suggestion of excessive speed in more than four of the accidents, but that fact can only be of slight interest, as most people attach widely different meanings to that elastic term. Moreoier; so low a proportion would seem to argue that motorists of all degrees in his districtdrive exceptionally slowly. I drive a good deal through the busier parts of that county and .1 cannot say that I have ever noticed any general difference between the speed of cars there and anywhere else.
When the Surveyor pointed out that " the evidence is definitely against the view that very high speeds are an important factor in accident causation," and that if such speeds were legally prohibited and the law enforced, the effect on the accident rate would be negligible, he was giving public and official utterance to a conclusion held for many years by experienced drivers. High speed, within reasonable limits, does not make for greater risk, either when it is comparative or generaL The great majority of cars are driven on the average much faster today than they were a few years ago, and some of them, occasionally, at maxima that in the past were only attained or attainable on long deserted stretches. There are very few such stretches left now anywhere south of the three most northerly counties, and high speeds are at least as common in the congested south as on the , open moorland roads.
It is probably true that if the maximum speed of all vehicles were reduced to a figure at which they could be pulled up within their own length or in a very few seconds there would be far fewer serious smashes, but such a condition would render the highways impassable in a very short time from
congestiOtr, and the traffic of the country would come to a standstill.' Safe speed is a neces4i6 On the_ inadequate roads we have inherited, and it is a grim paradox that they should, on the face of it, be mostly of a type that makes such speed
difficult to use as it should be used. - -
The arguments for and against speed are many and endless, and every day new ones are brought into action. A short time ago I was talking to one of the departmental chiefs responsible for the newest sections of the German autobahrien, and he told me that one of the main reasons for laying out these superb roads in long slow curves was to prevent people from always driving all out. The roads are wide enough and the curves gentle enough to allow of such speeds as will enable most kinds of Motor traffic to compete with the railways from point to point, but the fact that the road is not perfectly straight, or at any rate not for more than short distances, has the effect of keeping any driver but the insensible or the fool from constantly " blinding " at top speed.
This, he explained to me, was not dangerous so much through the actual pace as from the monotony and the chance of mechanical breakdown. On a dead straight road of this sort where there is nothing to beware of except the cars you overtake or are overtaken by, where you run almost as free from interference as a train on its lines, and the road stretches out to the horizon before you, sustained high speed has been found to induce mental inertia in drivers, leading, of course, to inattention and its dangers.
There' is another -aspect of the eternal speed question that does 'not, perhaps naturally, enjoy much discussion..,An.the papers, and that is the suitability or otherwise of certain of modern cars for being driven fait. It is part of my job to drive new and therefore comparatively strange cars over one or two set courses all the year round, taking such note as is possible of their various qualities and defects. All sorts of cars with every variety of bodywork are sent to me for these trials and all are asked to show what they can do in the way of comfortable maximum speed over the same stretch. Now it is quite true to say that all modern cars are very fast, if you consider a mile a minute or more to be fast. Only the very smallest and ,cheapest or the most groisly overbodied fail to "shciw well over 5o Miles an hour. some make light of 7o, -pr 75,..a few are at their_ ease at 86 and a very -few indeed have acceleration enough to show as much as 90 in the fleeting seconds at one's disposal. It is most impressive, considered in the light of what_ we expected and got only a few years ago, - but the side. of this pleasant picture that is seldom shown is the obvious unsuitability of some models for any such performances. Leaving aside the ,high-speed cars that aie quite definitely under-brakect,-. they -may weigh betWeen two and two and a half tons, fully laden, a " pile-up," at 8o miles an hour, ot ieriifying dimensions —you have the cars that so, to speak lose their balance over a certain speed. A car that is designed to go fast,is a car that sticks to the road in all circumstances, as well at its highest as at its towest speed, a cluite different machine from the car that will go fast but in whose design no special, provision is made for the swiftly changing cOnditions of accelerating from :5o.tO miles an hdur.- Its brakei may be adequate at 6o, dangerous at 70 and useless at 80. It is no longer the same car and the comparatively inexperienced owner may find himself In situa- ' tiohs unimagined either by himself or possibly by the maker of his car. Ordinarily a good and safe driver, he discoVers that he is momentarily a public danger.
A well-designed car is safe at all its speeds, but there are several models on the road today that should never be driven at within JO or 15 miles an hour of their maximum. Very properly the out-of-date design and build of the roads is blamed for the accident-rate and the foolhardiness of all road-users, but too often it is the fast car that should be slow which is at fault.
CS
[Note.—Readers' requests- for advice from our Motoring Correspondent- on the choice of new cars should be accompanied by a stamped and addressed envelope. The highest price payable must be given, as well as the type of body required. No advice can be given on the purchase, sale or exchange of used cars.]
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