MOTORING
The Lords' Road Report No official statement on the endless problem of the pre- vention of road accidents has yet been made to compare in lucidity and general common sense with the report issued by the Select Committee of the House of Lords which has sat in council since the beginning of last year. It is a formidable indictment of nearly every part of our make- shift system of road-building and traffic control, but the recommendations it makes for the bettering of the condi- tions it considers appalling are thoroughly constructive and practical. It is the work of men of experience who know their job. They have done it extremely well.
To Improve Road Conditions - Although nearly every one of the 200 recommendations seem good to the lay mind, there are many the everyday road-user will consider outstanding for their refreshing, plain common sense. The main plea is, of course, for properly designed roads, with all the modem safeguards, such as multiple tracks, fly-over junctions, roundabouts and the segregation of the different forms of traffic ; and for the organised education of the public in road behaviour which they rightly consider to be of prime importance. Among the road improvements suggested are the black-listing of those roads which have a high accident-rate: the moving back of telegraph-poles from the edge of the roads and the removal of trees dangerously near : the abolition of all level crossing and blind corners: and the painting of a warning across the road too yards before each road-sign. Road signs they consider should be uniform in colour and design and be of the reflecting type. There are far too many varieties in use, and " Informative signs are much more useful than danger signs," they very rightly remark.
Lower Traffic Lights They recommend that all unauthorised signs should be removed and, a most important point, that proper super- vision should exist over advertisements in light, many of which obscure the traffic lights or render them indistinguish- able. Traffic signals they consider too small and placed too low. It is extraordinary to think that, although the old high sign-posts are illegible from inside a car and the more pro- gressive county authorities have erected new ones at eye- level, the new traffic lights should deliberately have been put at the wrong height.
Other recommendations which every road-user must wel- come are the extension of the " courtesy cop " system to all parts of the country, certificates of fitness for second-hand cars before sale, stricter penalties for drunken drivers, tail- lights, tracks and compulsory third-party insurance for cyclists, and the abolition of the strident horn.
The Trippe Non-Dazzling Lamps I have now finished testing the " matched pair " of Trippe driving lights, and I find that the claims of the makers are well justified. They give a very wide beam of light, quite exceptionally powerful and, at the official height and &- tance, 3 ft. 6 ins. and 25 yds., really devoid of dazzle. Actually there was no dazzle at all at much greater distances, the quality of the light being peculiarly soft and diffused. As they were set by the makers they did not light up the road far enough to enable me to drive at any speed with safety, but after several experiments I found the best posi- tion. At this I could drive along a straight road with a tarred surface devoid of any reflection at about 4o miles 2r1 hour on a rainy night. I waited for that rainy night because, from long experience and the need of spectacles, I know how much rain cuts down light. And this rain was of the cats-and-dogs type, the windscreen streaming and the wiper beaten. A Severe Test At this setting I still had the very wide beam, and, so far as I could see, from the driving seat of another car, the normal ups and downs of a secondary road in Gloucester- shire made no difference to the comfort of the oncoming driver. I tried various combinations, switching off one or other of the lights to see if it made things easier for other people, but there was very little in it. The cutting out of one light reduces the illumination, spoils the pattern of it, and does not seem to make any perceptible difference. With the nearside light alone, which throws the wide beam, you can still drive at good speed, but not with the other. The road was specially chosen because it has neither hedges nor trees, both of which help enormously to floodlight the road. The lamps got no help of any sort, and I thought they came very well out of the test. They are made by Trippe Lights, Limited, 87, Victoria Street, S.W., and they cost, with the intensity control (not fitted in my case), £8 8s.; the other sets, £7 12s. 6d. and £6 6s.
Tim Healy's Pass I heard the name and looked on the map—a fairly reliable map, printed in Scotland— and found neither pass nor Tim Healy nor any suggestion of a road. I asked about it and received the expected variety of Irish replies. It was too bad for a car, it was the finest road in the entire Barony that ever I saw, it had no existence, though Tim himself, God rest his soul, was dead these many years. The peculiar Irish gift of annihilating time in any report finally had its effect and I was shamed into asking who and when Tim Healy had been. He sounded as if he had served Ireland in Cromwell's time and not in mine. It was a shock to hear the truth, as great perhaps as any I could have received if I asked a Frenchman when Clemenceau had lived.
An Irish Road I had not yet fully recovered from this humiliation (they were very kind to me about it, of course) when I came to the foot of the pass and tried to follow its purposeless windings over the dark face of the mountain. It seemed to me wholly appropriate to Tim, to the Ireland of to-day and the Ireland of all the years, the embodiment of an ideal, vague and direct (it goes straight ahead where other and less inspired roads would waver), magnificent, a personal achievement. Who can explain things Irish? Tim's Pass is as modern as the latest Alpine road, and every yard of it might have been there since the days of Tyrone.
" Si monumentum . . "
On most other passes you wait to get to the top in order to enjoy them. On Tim you crawl a little way up, stop for half an hour, creep on, and when you do reach the summit get out and walk back to some vantage-point you thought you had missed. You repeat the process on the other side. From almost any halt on either side you look out over , scenery which has no counterpart anywhere in the world, the deep blue mountains of Kerry and Cork, the mirror of Bantry Bay cracked into a thousand pieces by the silver swirl of the tide, and burnished in a thousand places by the play of sun and shadow; the flash of the far-off Atlantic; the peace of the Kenmare river. Whatever he did or did not do for Ireland Tim Healy'& name will not be forgotten. He has given travellers something new to see.
JOHN PRIOLEAU.
[Note.—Readers' requests for advice from our Motoring Correspondent on the choice of new cars should be accom- panied 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, vale or exchange of used cars.]
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