MOTORISTS AND THE FUTURE. T HE motor-car problem decreases in difficulty
very slowly. Four or five years ago, when legislation seemed likely to check, if not to abolish, the chief abuses of the new method of locomotion, it was easy to be optimistic as to the future, and many good judges of what may be called British public habits looked on the develop- ment of the motor-car industry with assurance and quiet. The dust problem had come to be recognised for what it was and still is, a road problem, and the disappearance of dust from better-made roads seemed likely to benefit everybody, motorist and pedestrian alike. There was, or seemed to be, a general recognition, which was certainly unselfish on the part of those who did not use motors, that the motor-car, in the hackneyed phrase, " had come to stay," and that the thing to do was to see how to make the best of an altered situation. Lastly, there was com- plete agreement among motorists and non-motorists upon one point : that the reckless, unmannerly, and dangerous driver was to be got off the roads, the sooner the better. The " road-hog " was to disappear at all costs ; and that he would disappear within a short space of time was often prophesied, particularly by those who knew, or thought they knew, the British temperament pretty well, and who supposed that sentences of imprisonment would have a properly deterrent effect upon persons who disregarded cautions, and were contemptuous of fines.
Unfortunately, order and toleration have not come so quickly. The Times for some weeks past has been opening its columns to correspondence on the subject of motor-car precautions and other aspects of the problem of British road traffic, and the result is probably a little different from what was expected of the working of the Motor-car Act of 1903. It is impossible to read the large number of letters which have been published without getting a general impression of reasoned dissatisfaction. Some of the letters have been written in more or less vigorous defence of the motorist, and perhaps uncon- sciously have shown a strange contempt of the rights of pedestrians and others who use, and pay rates for, the roads. One correspondent, for instance, suggested, apparently in perfect honesty and seriousness, that the strip of grass which borders many roads ought to be sufficient for the needs of persons on foot. A greater pro- portion of the letters have come from motorists genuinely anxious for the rights of others, and habitually careful to see that they themselves inflict as little inconvenience as possible upon persons whom they meet and pass. But perhaps the most noticeable, and in some ways the most disquieting, portion of the correspondence is that which represents another section of the public altogether. That is the very large public who neither own nor use motors, but who have suffered, and continue to suffer, grave inconvenience from motor-cars owned by others. Their case has been urged in the Times almost in every case quietly and with patience, and the general effect is of perplexing discomfort. It is not an explosion ; it is the temperate setting out of what are felt as genuine grievances. It should certainly be the duty of every motorist to see whether he can himself remove any legitimate grievance ; but to dispute or to uphold the legitimacy of any particular grievance may be a little more difficult.
Let us begin by avowing full belief in the value of the motor industry to the nation, and full trust in the motor- car as a useful and pleasant means of locomotion. A good motor-car properly driven on properly constructed roads should be a nuisance to nobody. On the other hand, a motor-car improperly driven on any road may be a nuisance and dangerous ; improperly driven on a badly constructed road it must be a curse and an abomination. Now the question at issue at present is not the question of what is a well-constructed road. It is a platitude that as our roads were not originally made for motor-cars, they must be differently constructed in the future if motor-cars are to use them ; and it is easy to define a good road as a road with a smooth, dustless, well-drained surface with gradual curves and gradients. A good road need not necessarily be, though it may be, a pleasant road ; you will lose most of the beauty of a Devonshire lane if you make it even a good road for horse traffic ; but we may leave that point for the present. We are all agreed, at all events, as to what is a merely good road. There is not the same unanimity of opinion as to what is careful or proper driving of a motor-car, either among those who use motors or those who do not. Boorish driving is recognisable and resented at once ; very dangerous driving is easy to dis- tinguish ; but what is really safe and considerate driving ?
It is the test readiest at hand which is in this case the true test. You come back, at the last, to the question of pace.
The problem can be reduced to absurdity, of course ; a motor-car proceeding at the rate of a pedestrian, easily steered, and capable of being stopped dead, is no more dangerous than a pedestrian of extra large size. A car travelling at ninety miles an hour is dangerous on any road. Between those two paces lie all the speeds which are safe and dangerous : fast speeds, which are often safe, though only sometimes courteous to other users of the road ; and comparatively slow speeds, which very seldom can cause discomfort to others, but which in their turn can be dangerous, as, for instance, in driving through a village when school-children are running out to play. Now the burden of the complaints in the Times correspondence is that motorists drive too fast,—too fast for safety, and too fast for courtesy.
They raise dust which they would not raise if they went more slowly, and they are the cause of frequent accidents. These are not new complaints, but unfortunately no fair- minded motorist can deny that there is a great deal of truth in them. Let him put to himself two or three questions. Let him ask whether it is possible to drive for, say, a couple of hours on any main English road without meeting with or being passed by many cars driven at a pace far exceeding the legal limit. Twenty miles an hour is, after all, no great pace. It is possible for a man to run a hundred yards in ten seconds,—that is, at the rate of eighteen hundred yards in three minutes, or twenty miles eight hundred yards in the hour. How many cars could a fast runner be always sure of catching ? The great majority of cars running at a rate of over twenty miles an hour may be driven perfectly safely ; but let the motorist next ask himself how many days he can drive without meeting at least one car driven furiously and dangerously, and then put himself in the place of the person who has never owned or used a motor-car. Apart entirely from the difficulty and discomforts of dust, the roads have become entirely different places, and can be used only under conditions entirely different from those of twenty years ago. When four years of legislation have not materially altered the conditions which legislation was intended to improve, can he wonder that there should be serious complaint, if not against motorists as a body, at all events against a state of things which has not eliminated the motorist who drives boorishly, illegally, and with grave danger to the public ?
It would be foolish, indeed, to bring angry charges against the whole body of motor-car owners and drivers. The majority of them are no worse mannered and no more dangerous on the road than other Englishmen. But without bringing any general charge, it is possible to urge one or two suggestions. In the first place, a motor-car owner who has not tried the experiment might well attempt to realise the spirit of the Act of 1903 by deter- mining on a fairly long run never to exceed a speed of, say, eighteen miles an hour. He might consider the experiment dull and the restriction foolish, but he would at least realise, perhaps with surprise, what the Act was intended to prevent. He might also take steps to be certain that the meaning of the Act was fully realised by his chauffeur. The point seems so obvious as hardly to be worth making, but the most considerate owner of a car cannot always be certain of the pace at which it is driven when his chauffeur is alone. It might possibly be enlightening to many men who believe, and would maintain in conversation, that they have never yet inconvenienced a pedestrian, to watch their own chauffeurs driving down to the station to meet the City train. Perhaps no simpler or commoner instances of the illegal or dangerous driving in the case of cars owned by decent and fair-minded persons could be given ; they are selected precisely because they are so simple and so common as to be almost forgotten among other worse abuses of the car, although contributing in the bulk a considerable slice to the heap of reasoning and unreasoning dislike. On other more obvious nuisances, paradoxical as it may seem,, we believe there is less necessity to insist. Dust almost certainly will one day disappear ; the siren will be made illegal ; the deliberately and wickedly dangerous driver, who tears through a country village at fifty miles an hour, will very rightly be imprisoned. But the possibilities of driving fast so as not to be exactly dangerous, but still annoying, to other users of the road will still remain ; and until roads are more suited for the new form of locomotion the real thing for motorists to remember is that a high rate of speed may be convenient to themselves, but to others will never appear to be necessary.
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