SAFETY FIRST AGAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 292, 10 December 1929, Page 18

SAFETY FIRST AGAIN.

HOW SAFE IS YOUR CAR? ESSENTIALS FOR THE DRIVER THE HUMAN FACTOR AND ;. \ MECHANICAL FAILURES.

"I wonder exactly how safe you are?" How many motorists, as they have looked fondly or frowningly upon it, have ever addressed this question to their car. It is quite an important question. Just how important has never been put into precise figures. There are some who attribute' all accidents to mechanical failures of some kind. There are others who discount mechanical failures entirely, and blame the human factor in every mishap. The preponderance of the limited evidence that has been collected unquestionably indicates thai mechanical failures are far less of a factor than the driver or the pedestrian. But still, inefficient brakes, inadequate lights, faulty steering and the like have resulted in mishaps. Sufficiently so, at least, to justify the query. But there is an answer to it. Safety standards exist for the measurement of almost every

feature of the car. It has been determined that safe brakes are those that will stop the car from a speed of 20 miles an hour within three yards in an emergency. Safe lights have been defined, though the definitions vary in certain places.

Where many a motorist fails is in not realising that no matter how inherently good a brake system may be, it needs proper maintenance. It will not go 011 for ever stopping the car safely and surely without attention. That is an impossibility, for everything mechanical eventually wears out, and before that it diminishes in efficiency. Now although an engineer recognises this immediately, it is quite natural that the average motorist should not recognise it so readily for the latter may not have the slightest interest in his car mechanically so long as it "runs." Concerninghheard r lights, from the point of view of safety, it is unanimously agreed that the car owners errs in thinking only of eliminating glare when he has his lights inspected or adjusted. It is quite as important that the intensity of the light and its position be accurately placed.

The modern motorist makes a mistake when he forgets that tyres are a tremendously vital factor in any car safety inventory. The motorist who says with regard to a tyre, "I'm expecting it to burst any day now," is absolutely foolhardy. Cars have been wrecked in mishaps,, due solely to burst tyres. Some motorists have got the idea that a rear wheel is less dangerous than a front one. That is not true. In these days of high speeds, four-wheel brakes, traffic congestion and the like, it is unsafe to have any but perfectly sound tyres on any wheel. The additional mileage obtained by "trying to drive such a tyre to its death is not worth having at the price one may have to pay on car repairs or doctor's bills, to say. the least of it.