CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19669, 12 July 1929, Page 6

CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS.

SIMPLE LITTLE FAULTS. Twenty years ago no on© could have imagined that motor-cars would be placed on the road in great numbers with any degree of safety. Yet critics of motoring accidents which occur always neglect the fact of the enormous number of cars that are running daily and the very great mileage covered.

Obviously the greater number of cars, the greater must be the number of accidents. It is the proportion of accidents in relation to the mileage run which counts. What is important is that accidents should be avoided at all costs. One would imagine that this wouM be the first thought in everbody's mind, but the point which strikes one forcibly in connexion with the modern motorist—if one can classify people under the headings of "modern ' or "ancient"—is that very few of them ever consider that there is any likelihood of an accident occurring to themselves. Many drivers appear to forget—this is a very important point—that a car cannot be stopped in its own length from 30 m.p.li. in ordinary circumstances. It cannot, indeed, be stopped in the available stretch of road visible at the speed at which some people travel round a corner. Admittedly, most accidents have to be avoided by dodging rather than by braking, but if only 100 ft of the road is visible in front of the car it is only reasonable to reduce the speed to at least that from which the car can be stopped in 100 ft. To drive on the wrong side of the road ought to be absolutely inexcusable in any circumstances, and it is one of the most fruitful causes of collisions. By driving on the wrong side of the road, it is not meant deliberately driving on the right-hand side of a straight road, but taking a right-hand corner either on the right-hand side of the road, or just over the centre of the road, where the nature of the corner affords a restricted view. It is obvious also that cross-roads are real danger points, since very many collisions occur either at cross-roads or. at what are called intersections of one road with another. Such collisions are very largely due to a falaa sense of security, because the speed of cars is not, as a rule, reduced sufficiently to give the driver a fair chance if another car emerges from a side road and its driver makes a mistake. That is when the real trouble exists, namely, in another driver doing something totallv unexpected. A good driver has to be'on the alert for the unexpected—this is the direction in which many people undoubtedly err. Numbers of persons driving to-da.v are not experts, and are not complete masters of their never ill be. and could not reasonably be expected to handle their machines faultlessly in an emergency. The fact that a driver neither understands signals nor uses them properlv is not due to ignorance, but is due to thoughtlessness. Half the possibilities of trouble in modern traffic are due to just simple little faults.

There are 65 bus companies in EnglinH Wales, and a large part of Scotland', which ca r ry an av ra oof 000 passengers a day in their 1-,000 buses.