ROAD HOGS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 133, 1 March 1929, Page 9

ROAD HOGS

REMEMBER FELLOW MOTORISTS. “What makes a road hog?” asks the Hon. Airs. Victor Bruce in an overseas paper. “Unsuitable speed in the road conditions of the moment? Well, that is, I suppose, the most common mark of the genus, and the fault by which the majority of people identify the road hog. But to travel faster than is safe or for the public convenience is by no means the only wrong thing that may be done at the wheel of a motor-car. In fact, speed has not necessarily anything to do with it. You can, for instance, make yourself particularly obnoxious by travelling too slowly, and thus holding up the rest of the traflic on a busy main road. Or you can be a road hog at rest. Road conditions in the country as well as in towns have become such that a sta-' tionary car can be just as much a nui-' sance, and even danger, as a vehicle travelling too rapidly. “Conditions, now, are different. In the old days you could take risks, on the principle that it was unlikely there would be two fools at the same point at the same time. Now you know there will be—not two. but twenty two! And so in everything else: there is no necessity’ for the beginner to feel inferior, just because the old hand looks superior. But there is need to think; and to think particularly of how even the simplest of one’s actions will affect other people. If yoi don’t think, you are bound to be a road hog, even at rest; and if you do, your own common sense will generally tell you what to do and what not to do. “And there are plenty of other things that you can do and should not do. Taking ap more than your fair share of space in a car park is one of them. Lack of skill at reversing is the most common cause of this particular manifestation of ‘road hogism at rest; but that is only a reason, and not an excuse. ■When you go shopping, too, it is just as well to make sure that one of your rear wheels is not so close to the tramlines that when you come out you will find a strin:' of trams patiently—more or less—await'ng your arrival so that they can proceed, Since the police will probably have something to say in such a case, I don’t suppose that any one. person is likely to make that mistake twice. “There will be lapses, of course; but when you get sworn at by passing drivers for something that you are not conscious of having done, don’t just see red —try to get at.the reason for it. We are all in too much of a hurry to address unnecessary remarks to other motorists, so you can usually take it for granted that those unintelligible comments are something more important than birthday greetings. “Road ‘hogism,’ ” concludes the writer, “is generally a breach of the eleventh commandment: ‘Thou shalt cause no inconvenience to thy neighbour.’ ”