DRIVING MANNERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 28

DRIVING MANNERS

Driving skill, good road judgment, and mental alertness are all valuable qualities in ensuring safety on the road, yet they are, according to one authority, not nearly so important as good road manners. Good manners, it is stated, spring fundamentally from an inborn sense of courtesy, of consideration for others, and of self-respect, and are essentially .a social virtue that is not naturally evident in the majority of mankind, but has to be cultivated and fostteed in the young. Most people of any social standing display passably good mariners in their ordinary contacts with their fellow-meri, but strange.to say, many of them appear to discard this "veneer of civilisation" once they step into their cars.. It is almost as if they considered themselves exempt from the ordinary restraints of modern social existence, once they get thencar under way. It is this lack of restraint that primarily breeds the bad manners that are responsible for a large proportion of motor accidents.

According to an American authority on petroleum products, 200,000,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas is used annually to produce the carbon black essential to the compounding of tough, slowwearing rubber for motor tyre treads. This product of natural gas has lengthened tyre life.by two and a half to three times, and the saving to motor owners in this form has been computed to be upwards of forty times the value of the gas used in the production of carbon black.

A travelling museum is being used in America for educational purposes at schools. The outfit, comprising a neatly-canopied truck and an extremely long streamlined trailer, has an overall length of 62 feet. The interior of the trailer is fitted up with 1001 educational exhibits. A special Government permit was necessary to permit of its making use of the public roads. It has travelled over 450,000 miles without accident.