SPEED IS DANGEROUS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 111, 6 November 1937, Page 28

SPEED IS DANGEROUS

ONE OF MANY FACTORS

B.UT IT IS THERE

■■ There is a tendency among motorists to belittle the danger factor of speed and magnify' some of the arguments put forward that speed is a minor and not major cause of accidents. One of the most recent was by a speaker who, denying that speed was the main cause of accidents, went on to dilate on the stopping distance being what the driver should know, and should watch. The argument -was developed on the lines that the stopping distance increased with the square of the speed, and no logical mind, following the'speaker, .could do other than remark that what he condemned as a main factor in accidents be supported in braking, speed, and stopping distance in its ultimate analysis coming to one and the same thing. If a driver cannot stop within the distance necessary to avoid a crash he is going too fast.

Speed is a prime factor in a very

I large proportion of road accidents, but lit rarelyx stands alone as* the one. factor; it is generally associated with quite a number of other things, not least, bad road surfaces, bad road design, inattentiveness—not. necessarily on the part of the speeding driver but on the part of otffer road users—tiredness (both in the. car and; without), jollification (some other body's), and a host of other things : that cloak up the fact that at bottom .someone was going too fast. One must condemn speed. Definitely, •it is dangerous; dangerous not necessarily because the road conditions make it so, but because someone else is incapable of meeting the exigency. Pedestrians, for instance, are often paralysed by speed, and a similar condition may attach to a driver faced by speed. Many drivers are badly disconcerted when someone overtakes them at speed. These, of course, are not • speed accidents. The accident is due to inattention, incompetence, or nerves. Morally, however, speed is there. Many people have been brought up. to believe that the world is their football but that creed is dying. No one has any right to' monopolise the road, and excessive speed,is only an attempt to establish such monopoly. One must agree that stopping distance should be known, but to'know stopping distances implies a knowledge of speed, the one connoting the other. To say it is dangerous to drive at a speed that necessitates some hundreds of feet to pull up is merely to say that it is dangerous to "drive at high speed. It is dangerous, too; to drive at speed not so high, especially when there is other !'traffic'.'about,"'or', road conditions are unsuitable.' .