EMERGENCY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 83, 9 April 1929, Page 16

EMERGENCY.

It would not be so necessary to introduce laws to govern the speed of care if only drivers would really understand the mechanism of their cars. It is not always the speed at which the car is travelling that constitutes the danger, but the inability on the part of the driver to act promptly in an emergency. An engineer has to pass exhaustive tests before he is allowed to control machinery of any kind. Yet the average owner-driver, after mastering a fewelementary facts governing the car, casts aside the instruction book and takes to the road ignorant of the capabilities of the machine he is driving. This, of course, is not true of every driver, but jt may be suggested that a large majority of the drivers of the present day are not capable of taking down and reassembling an engine, nor do they fully understand the principles of many of the niceties of driving, such as double declutching or intentional skidding in order to avoid an accident. It is the little scraps of knowledge one acquires while experimenting and tinkering that count in a crisis- They, help to brin<* about a complete understanding between the driver and his car,