SO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOOD?

Grey River Argus, 10 December 1938, Page 11

SO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOOD?

(By Floyd Taylor). 1 A life guard sees an arm flung up Jby a swimmer out beyond the break- | ers. He hears a faint cry for help and races to the rescue. Within a J few minutes he has a man stretched out on the sand and is applying respiration. An ambulance rolls up and the man is taken to a hospital to be treated for submersion ..When the rescued man’s friends hear about it they say that they can’t understand it. They say the man is a good swimmer and they don/l see how he got into trouble. A lifeguard would explain that he spends far more time rescuing swimmers who think they re good than he does in rescuing people who just go in to splash around near shore. The swimmer who thinks he’s good has confidence and takes chances. He gets into deep water, far from shore. When he has a cramp or becomes exhausted it s a real job to bring him back to safety. Many, swimmers are drowned every summer. Like the confident swimmers some of the confident automobile drivers lose their lives. Many a driver takes chances because he thinks he’s good, and many drivers die horribly as a result—dies cut by glass and torn by steel. The confident driver, on a road he knows, drives almost automatically, driving by instinct instead iof conMdious thought. Because he drives by instinct ,he gets into strange accidents that would never happen to a novice. A case in Holland concerned an accident involving a driver who thought he was good. The accident . happened on a well-made, straight 1 road on a clear afternoon,' with no other cars in sight. The driver of the car swerved suddenly and ran down thi'ee children riding bicycles on the other side of the road . The expert witness, a doctor, said that the driver momentarily lost consciousness due to fatigue to the monotony _of the road, the monotonous sound of the motor, the regularity of the rows of trees along the side of the roaa and too great familiarity with the route. The driver had fallen into a drowsy state of relaxation and then slipped into unconsciousness.. He had thought he was a good driver. He had been s 0 sure of it that he hadn t even been able, to stay awake. His confidence in himself cost the lives of three children. The novice driver would never have an accident like that one . But, like the swimmer who thinks he’s good, the driver who thinks he’s good takes chances, lets his attention relax. He speeds because he has confidence in himseit. And he takes chances on what other drivers on the road will do. Thats always dangerou s because many drivers on the road are, not good drivers. A driver who thinks he’s good may go carelessly across an intersection because he has the right of way. And a poor driver may crash into the side of his car. The. driver who thought he was good will be able to say that it wasn’t hi s fault. But that won’t help matters much. Not long ago a man was driving along a highway with his wife, their son and another youth in the car. Coming toward them was a truck, well oyer; on its ; own side of the road. Behind the truck was a bus. As the sedan neared the truck, the truck_driver suddenly stopped. The bus driver swung to the left to avoid hitting the rear of the truck. The bus and the, sedan met head on. All fourpassengers in the sedan were killed. It wasn’t the fault of the driver of the sedan. And he was probably a good driver, too. But he had been called upon, suddenly and unexpectedly, to face a situation that any driver may be called upon to face at any moment. To stay alive and unhurt the driver needs constant alertness as well as competence. He has to worry about the other fellow’s mistakes as well as his ow.l. It isn’t enough for a driver to thmK that he’s good. He has to be ready, always, to demonstrate his ability. There are drivers who are good, and know it, but there aj?e also drivers who think that they are much belter than they are. Tests at Harvard have shown that drivers begin to lose their sometimes only slightly, at. the age of thirtyfefive. The joss of ability often becomes serious after the age of sixty or sixty-five. At that age many a driver cannot stand the glare ol approaching headlights as well as he could when he was younger. He can no longer thrust his foot down on the brake as quickly as he could years ago and his co-ordination in steering is not nearly as good as that oi a youth in his twenties. Drivers sometimes have ample warning that they really aren’t as good as they think they are. The man who has a number of minor accidents —who crumples a fender and a few weeks later side, swipes another car and then sometime afterward knocks down a pedestrian, all without serious results—usually is practising for a major accident. He may be practising ror the accident that will mean his own death. The minor accidents ought to be enough to tell him that something is wrong with his driving. The driver who thinks he’s good may be a speeder. He, too, may be practising for his own dejath. The safe driver doesn’t speed. He knows that ex- / cessive speed is the hungriest killer on the highway. He knows that it’s better for his car not to drive too He knows that reasonable speed saves gasoline, oil and wear on tyres. The safe driver uses exceptional care in overtaking and passing. He dosn’t pass the car ahead unless he is certain that he has enough room. He doesn’t pass on hills and curves. He doesn’t travel so fast by night as he does by day. He slows down at cross roads and he’d rather be alive than insist upon having the right of way just because he’s entitled to it. The safe driver doesn’t let himself get too tired, for he knows that his reactions are slower when he’s exhausted. He doesn’t drink before he drives. He gives hand signals and watches for the signals of others. He takes care of his car, and particularly of his brakes. On long hills he uses compression for braking power, sometimes going into second, or even low, on steep hills especially when the road is slippery. He has his brakes tested every few thousand miles, but he tries to keep out of situations in which he will be forced to jam on his brakes and possibly skid.

He puts his old tyres on the rear wheels, because blow-outs have more disastrous results on front tyres. He makes sure his tyres are properly inflated. He never uses them after they

' are worn down to the fabric. He is cautious on wet roads and doubly cautious on slippery roads. He has his lights checked at least twice a year, and he dims his lights when approaching other cars. He never goes by an oncoming car at night at high speed into the darkness beyond, where his eyes will take a few moments to adjust themsJVves to the changed light. And he always keeps four or five lengths behind the car ahead. The driver who thinks he’s good might read these rules of the safe driver and ask himself how many of them he follows. He might read them ( w|th care 'because death by automobile is x not one of the pleasantest ways t o die. And injury by automobile can. be as bad or* worse than death. Many of the accidents occur far from a hospital—not on a city street where an ambulance can reach the scene in ten or twenty minutes but far out in the country, perhaps in the mountains. There was a girl, one time, who crawled for ten hours over mountain terrain to get help for three companions injured in an automobile accident. The car had gone off the road on a grade and tumbled down into a gorge. The road was little travelled and no one saw the accident or passed the place that day. There were six in the car. Two were killed and the other four badly hurt. The girl, eighteen years old, was the least seriously injured. She had a fractured leg. She crawled on her hands and one knee dragging the broken leg behind her; up the side of the mountain to the road. She lost consciousness several times. When she reached the road she waited for a car to come along, but none came. She started for the nearest village, painfully crawling. She reached the outskirts of the village before someone saw her, heard her story and organised a rescue party. She had been driving with a driver who thought he was good, but was proved not to be good enough. Thousands upon thousands of accidents every year are the fault of drivers who are too sure they’re good. Many of the readers of this article are drivers. How many of them are too sure of their ability? How many are careless because they are over confident? How many who read this article will be dead before the year is out—because they think they’re good?