JUST AROUND THE CORNER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 6 December 1938, Page 11

JUST AROUND THE CORNER

I tf ♦ j h ROAD SAFETY WEEK J, 1 EVERY DRIVER IS CONCERNED b« b. tl £i POSSIBILITIES OF ACCIDENTS c< h i By Floyd Taylor) tl tl Over a pleasant road which winds along the top of a bluff, drove a man ' in a light auotmobile, a small sedan n H like those owned by millions of drivers. The road ran straight for a mile or two j and then curved, sharply. What was I LI around the corner for the driver? j a What situation would he have to face j * when he made that turn? He couldn’t I see around the corner. There was no way he could tell what was there until he made the turn. Was a child 1 in the street? Was an old man crossing fc the road? Hit a tree fallen in the v path of the car? The man in the sedan couldn’t have been thinking of the possibilities. He took the curve too fast and too close to the centre of the road. He didn’t find a child, or an old man, or a tree. What £ he found was a truck coming toward him. a truck edged over into the middle 1 of the road, just as the sedan was. Because the sedan was going too fast it was too late for the driver to save F I himself. He didn’t have time to pull j ° over to his own side of the road. He | tried but he couldn't make it. The [ truck hit a rear wheel of the sedan, i The sedan was hurled across the road j and slipped off the bluff, teetering a ( t I moment before it fell. Ten feet down i j. |it struck a ledge of protruding rock, j v ! toppled off, turned over and landed j f j wrong side up on boulders twenty feetj f below the ledge. It wasn’t a car any j j ! more by that time —it was junk. When j 1 rescuers clambered down the rocks j ' they found the driver wasn’t a man any ■ more either. There was another accident on the . j same curve a few days later. An accident caused in the same way. Two i cars were coming around the curve in ; opposite directions, both of them . travelling a little too fast and both near | the middle of the road. The cars met head on. There was a noise like the racket that would be made if you : dropped a kitchen range out of a third j (floor window onto a cement sidewalk, j One of the drivers was dead after the j accident and the other was alive. The; j living man was crumpled up on the ! i floor of the car—but he was conscious. ; The two accidents happened within a j ■ few days on the same curve. There j may be another to-day. It’s not un- j j usual for there to be accident after 1 accident on one curve in a road, j ; What’s around the next corner for any j j driver? Perhaps nothing except a j I lovely view. But. possibly, something i else. Death may be in the street around the next corner—death for a child, death for an old man—or death for the driver himself. But death can be cheat- . ed by the cautious driver. The cautious driver has time to stop if he finds a tree fallen across the road; he ! has time to swerve away from danger , if he meets a truck on the wrong side of the pavement; he finds himself with a chance for life no matter what is around the corner. But death can't be cheated by drivers who use the speed of the modern automobile to fling themselves at it. They are asking for it. When they don’t kill themselves they kill others. There was a man who kissed his wife goodbye one morning, turned out of his driveway and went rolling along the street, picking up speed as he travelled. He came to a corner where he was to make a right turn. Did he think about what was around that blind corner, a corner obscured by shrubs and trees? He couldn’t have been thinking, for he took it too fast. He slowed down a little, but not enough. What did he find? What was there to meet him? He whirled around the corner and directly in front of his radiator he saw an old man leaning on a cane as he crossed the street. The drivers’ foot struck at the brake pedal. He started to swing left and a bulky truck loomed in his path. He whirled the wheel back, trying to dodge between the truck and the old mail. His fender ; caught the old man. The cane went flying and the man was tossed, like a bag of wheat, half-way to the curb. A policeman ran up, then left for a minute or two to put in a call for an ambualnce. The driver sat, with his head j on his hands, on the running-board j of the car. He stared at the old man ' stretched out in the road. Such accidents at blind corners don’t happen: once in a thousand times, but they do happen. What’s around the next blind corner for any driver? Who knows? j And who knows what will come out \ of the side street at the next intersec- j tion? j There was a man driving one day, j at a fairly reasonable speed—driving | safely, he thought, in a good car, on a ! street with traffic lights when he found that some drivers pay no attention to lights. The man with the good car had the lights with him when he reached an intersection. He started across. Out j of a side street came a battered old wreck of an automobile and crashed; into his car. Both cars came to rest against a light pole. The driver of the good car was badly hurt. The driver ' of the old wreck had escaped injury and was taken to court. The judge asked him why he had ignored the red 1 light and he said he hadn’t seen it. All drivers are in constant danger from fools on the road, particularly on 1 curves and at intersections, where no I one can see danger just ahead. Ask j the history of any heavily travelled 1 road with lots of twists and turns and j | you wil find that many a driver has ! died on it. Foolish drivers take curves | too fast on such a road. They go off i ! the road into telephone poles, or crash j into cars coming the other way or hit ■ roadside ditches at high speed and j their cars roll over and over in some j farmer’s field. ; There was an odd accident on such i a road a lew years ago. A driver was! ; going too fast —far too fast—when he j | came to a curve. The highway de- j j partment had marked it as dangerous! j because the curve was far sharper than I ; it appeared to be—but this driver did- ; 1 n’t slow down. When he reached the | sharpest part of the curve he couldn't hold his car on the road. The catclimbed a bank, ran over fifty feet of lawn and smashed through the side of a house into a living room. A woman * was sewing in the living room and her

children were playing beside her. Not one was hurt much except a baby, j The baby’s spine was injured. Numerous accidents at curves happen between the hours of 5 and 6 in the afternoon. People are hurrying home from work at that time of day. It’s the worst hour of the twenty-four in number of accidents. There are more accidents on curves at night than in the day. Perhaps it’s because drivers are so often blinded by the lights of cars coming toward them. More of the night accidents are fatal, too. And the fatalities vary according to the speed. If a driver has an accident at twenty-five miles an hour there is about one chance in 42 that he will be killed. One in 42 is the death rate for accidents at speeds between 20 and 29 miles per hour. If he is driving above 50 and he has an accident there is one chance in 11 that he will be killed. His chances of life go down as his miles per hour go up. When an automobile hits a tree at 70 miles an hour the driver is not likely ever to sit behind a wheel again. In such an accident on a curve not long ago, the car was literally cut in two. The driver was going so fast that the car was sliced through the middle by the tree. The driver, of course, was killed. He was dead long before the dust settled at the scene of the accident. The same thing can happen to any driver who tries to take curves at 70. No one can know what’s around the corner. Perhaps at the next curve his luck will be good. Perhaps there is no truck in the middle of the road around the corner. Perhaps the curve is no sharper than it looks. Perhaps he will miss that telephone pole. Perhaps if he hits it the strength |of his well built car will save him. j But he had better not be too sure.