She says...

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 25

She says...

“Running out of road,” the one-car accident, is almost invariably a case of someone going too fast for the conditions — which usually has nothing whatsoever to do with the speed limit. “Almost,” because there can also be cases of a driver collapsing, going to sleep, or of mechanical failure of some sort. It’s unwise to judge any accident without knowing the facts. Hill roads often catch people out. Those of us who spend most of our motoring lives on Canterbury’s flat roads are probably more likely to “come unstuck” in the hills than are those who drive on such terrain for most of their lives. One of the most thought-provoking pieces of advice on hill driving that' I recall came in a book by a noted racing and rally driver. Hills, he said, should be regarded as “vertical curves.” In the same way that one had to slow for a curve, one should slow for

a vertical curve — the crest of the hill being the apex of the corner, as it were. Obviously most dangerous, he pointed out, was the situation where both a horizontal curve and a vertical curve occurred together: the downhill bend. Indeed, this is the sort of bend that most often brings the incautious to grief. .lust at the time when gravity is trying to separate the tyres from the road, you turn the wheel, and ask the tyre to give extra grip to get you around the corner. But you can still make it worse by using the brakes as well, and asking the tyres to give you braking grip in addition to the turning grip and the resistance to the force of gravity.’ Looking at it this way, you can see how easy it can be to ask for far more grip than the tyres can ever hope to give. The lesson seems quite Hear. — Barbara Petre.