TAKING CORNERS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2671, 17 September 1937, Page 6

TAKING CORNERS

SKILL IN DRIVING SPEED-AND-BRAKE EVIL ERRORS IN PACE JUDGMENT. ]y[OTOR car drivers can always be judged by the manner in which they negotiate corners. Skill in this department almost invariably d.enotes the good driver under all other conditions, and, what is more important, the safe driver.

Cornering is, in its way, a fine art which has only been mastered by the few. It involves an understanding of the forces affecting a car when it is turned out of a straight path, when the engine is pulling and when it is on the over-run, and the different degrees of wheel adhesion given by varying kinds of road surface. If every motorist was to make an effort to study it in an intelligent way it is quite certain that there would be far fewer accidents on the roads than there are to-day. Statistics show that corners are the danger spots. The most common mistake in cornering is to enter a curve at too high a speed, an error which a motorist is apt frantically to try to correct, by braking hard when into the bend. Too often trouble follows. This error, unfortunately is fairly easy to make with modern cars, whose smooth and silent running is apt to mislead the driver into thinking the pace much slower than it actually is. Until bettei* judgment of car speed has been developed it can be prevented at the forming the habit of glancing at the speedometer as a corner is approached.

It is even better to adhere rigidly to the correct principles of cornering.

Let The Engine Pull.

The really skilled driver always negotiates corners with the engine pulling, if he is travelling at any speed, and this involves slowing down before the corner is reached, so that the car can be taken through while accelerating gently. Thus, it is practically impossible to enter the bend too fast.

The driving wheels have much better road adhesion when the engine is pulling than they have on the “overrun,” i.e., when the throttle is shut and the momentum of the car is pushing' against the engine. The driver who accelerates through a bend always has much better • control of his vehicle, and can instantly adjust its speed more exactly within a safe margin.

Acute bends are fairly safe, because a driver will slow right down to a crawl, if need be. The greatest danger lies in sweeping main road bends, which invite a fairly high speed, for if a driver sets his front wheels to suit the radius of the curve, and goes round fast, there is a danger of the

maximum safe speed being exceeded, and the tail may drift outw'ards so that the car slides right off the road. In such an event there is too often little that a driver can do to stop it. Slackening speed suddenly and applying the brakes will tend to exaggerate the trouble. Preventing Skid. The experienced motorist, besides cornering with the car accelerating, always negotiates the bend in a series of straight runs, twitching the wheel each time he changes direction in order to achieve his object with a very small back wheel skid. In actual practice, the steering wheel is never really at rest in his hands. It has been said that this method is rather hard on tyres, but the skidding is so minute that this is open to question. Moreover, it is by far the safest method known, and what is a little rubber compared with the safety of the car and its occupants? The methods of cornering described above are intended only as a general guide to inexperienced drivers. They can be applied in most cases, but each corner must be treated on its merits.

Other problems will present themselves. Some fairly acute bends will be deep in gravel, which will act as ball-bearings under the wheels and

start the car sliding if the .speed is excessive. Another type of bend will have a surface composed of corrugations radiating out from the inside, and when a car travelling fairly fast gets on to these, the wheels will leap into the air and be thrown sideways as the front wheels are turned into the bend. On mountain passes, narrow roads and completely blind corners, with a precipice on the outside, will dictate extreme caution.

When in doubt, slow right down. There is no need for any motorist ever to be involved in an accident on a corner.