Motoring The Dreamers on the Road THEY are easily recognized.
Male or female—and it is still difficult to avoid the obvious quotation about the greater deadliness of the female species—the dreaming driver can he marked down before he or she has done anything. By such I. do not mean the driver who deliber- ately floes dangerous things, but a driver of a type far more common whose, for the most part unconscious, potentialities for disaster are at least as great. In one of the scores of letters that have been printed in every type of scriouS newsiiaper since the -new Bill was laid before the House it was suggested that those drivers who have been convicted of either dangerous or careless driving (the distinction between the two is so subtle that I- confess it escapes me altogether) should be compelled to carry a badge proclaiming,to the world that they are dangerous drivers, a badge of infamy, a brand, a leper's bell—analogies are endless. It was an impracticable Proposal, but one saw the gliMmerings of- an idea behind the angry writing. A kicker. in the hunting field carries a ribbon in his tail warning others to keep clear of his heels. Why should not the ." careless " driver be simi- larly advertised ? One could imagine many occasions, Conjure up many scenes in which the substitute for the red ribbon would be amply justified—in one of these appalling week-end . processions, for example, along the highroads leading to the sea or the north, it would be extremely useful- to be able to pick out of the endless trail the ear on which you would be wise more especially to keep an eye. What is infinitely more important, the red ribbon or scarlet " D " on the back panel (about a foot high. let us say, in reflecting letters) would have a most wholesome effect on the demeanour and conduct of those compelled to display it. It was, of course, no more than a dream. transgressing as it does every canon and instinct of the British mentality, but it was dreamed by a man who had somewhere in him a strong sense of the practical.
In point of fact the brand or badge is really unnecessary so far as the experienced driver is concerned. If you have driven for a number of years on our own and foreign roads, you can identify this peculiar type of " dangerous " driver on the open road as easily as in " built-up areas." It will be by signs that are for the most part imperceptible to anyone but the driver himself. When it is a man, the principal sign is nearly always the speed at which lie is driving in the near neighbourhood of other cars that gives him away. I do not mean that he is necessarily driving fast, but that he is cursed with the unfortunate tendency to drive at what is the wrong speed, and the wrong speed can be slow as well as fast. He may be overtaking the wrong car, for example, the car which is quite obviously faster than his, or a ear that is making signals of its intention to turn right or left. He may hug the kerb or the middle of the road, and perhaps with some notion that he is well within the law, maintain what appears to him to be a safe speed—perfectly unconscious that that particular speed in those particular conditions of traffic may at any moment be fruitful of danger. Simi- larly he goes fast for no special reason for a mile or two, slows down for no special reason, accelerates again, sets himself a definite pace for a while and again abandons it for no reason. He is thoughtless, a dreamer on the road. Almost one can say that he resembles a ship at sea that is out of control, a danger to navigation. You could not, particularly in a court of law, bring a specific charge of dangerous or careless driving against him. He has a perfect legal right to maintain any speed at which, in safety to others, he has full control of his car, but he shows plainly that he is given to foolish and meaningless im- pulses and that he is not fit to be in charge of a car in 1934. He is not trnific-conscious. What is going on all round him makes little or no impression on his thoughts. Obviously he sees the rest of the traffic that is in front of him and obviously, though probably quite unconsciously, he regards what he sees as the end of the stream. It does not occur to him that there is anyone behind him.
You can always spot the man by what lie does. The female of the species can be identified by what she does not do. Again, if you have driven regularly on all sorts of roads in the past few years, you will be able, in seven cases out of ten, to say definitely, " I cannot see the driver, but that car is driven by a woman."
I do not hope to be believed, except possibly by those few who know what very strange things happen in motoring, but it is a fact that the very look of your dreaming woman's car gives her away every film.. The car and its track. She thinks of overtaking, of dropping back, of keeping her place in the procession, and she changes her mind before she has made it up, She will not and she will. She has probably no notion at all of taking any risks and would be extremely indignant if you suggested that her behaviour is calculated to promote danger. Unfortunately her indecision or rather her terrible habit of toying with the thought of doing this or that, going left or right or stopping, when she has no real intention at the moment of doing anything at sall, betrays her as -a driver to whom you must give the widest possible berth as clearly as if her tail number were branded in crimson. You spot her at once if von have had experience of her, but it is next to impossible to explain to anybody else why you recognize her. Those half-hearted beginnings of action, that almost imperceptible swerve which tells. you clearly that some nearly forgotten thought has crossed her mind, that perilous trick of turning her head to talk to her coal- panion, those absurd furious looks that she throws at you when at last, exasperated and anxious to put as great a distance as possible in the quickest possible time between you, you overtake her, all these, in them- selves officially harmless, are unmistakable signs of your thoughtless driver. She needs no leper's bell when she is among experienced people, but unfortunately there is a very large number of inexperienced drivers on the roads now. They have their hands full with the business of learning the ordinary risks of the road and driving decently and safely, and one cannot expect them, at any rate until they have had some experience, to develop the sixth sense of the good motor driver which instantly identifies dreaming at the wheel.
It is here that lies our greatest difficulty, not on1N-
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defining but in discouraging the potentially dangerous driver. The road hog we all know, the cutter-in. the overtaker at the wrong place and speed, the shaver, the man whose finger is never off the horn button, the man who sounds his horn everywhere except at crossroads. the irredeemable cad, he too needs no branding. In time it is to be hoped he will be driven off the roads. Ile is a definite criminal and as a rule his crimes are, so to speak, standard, with the appropriate punishment allotted to each. The dreaming indefinite driver who is usually a man and the semi-conscious driver who is usually a woman, are more-difficult to deal with, but it is just possible that one of the provisions of the new Bill may be helpful. I mean the proposed driving tests. It is very far from certain that, even if they are of the most difficult and searching kind, these will do very much good in the ordinary way. Dangerous driving is a matter not of lack of training, but of character. of stupidity in some cases, but generally speaking of innate lack of consideration. It does not at all follow that such persons will fail to pass any driving test likely to be imposed. The eases of the type of driver I have just tried to describe are different. I believe that if the examination in the Highway Code is given sufficient importance, the new entry of drivers will be a better lot, and if in addition the theory of the road (if I eau put it so) is impressed upon them and-the first principle drilled into them, we shall all benefit. That principle is decision. " Make up your mind what you are going to do, warn other people of your intention, and then do it." " A crowded highway is not a place on which you can 'go for a drive.' It is an extremely danger pus place through which you must get with safety to yourself and others." I should like to see these high in the list of the directions for safe driving.
Joax PaioLEAL-.
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