MOTOR & CYCLING

Taranaki Daily News, 5 October 1929, Page 20 (Supplement)

MOTOR & CYCLING

NEW DRIVERS. QUESTION OF AGE. Whilst age is no bar to efficient driving of an automobile, if the person at th© wheel has had years of handling a car, and thus developed both road sense and control, it is quite a different thing when a beginner, of say, from 55 years of age and upwards, who desires to drive a car and who has never even driven a horse-drawn vehicle, or ridden a bicycle —applies for a, “driver’s license.” Such an individual would naturally have little or no road sense, and might be physically unfit. Under these conditions it certainly appears that there aie potent reasons why a more rigid examination should be applied by the registering authorities to elderly applicants, and especially of their physical condition. . ■ We are all prepared—having no choice —to take the reasonable risks .of the road, but' those risks are unreasonably accentuated while there are on the road motorists whose skill and control of their cars leave anything to be desired, and whose vision and road sense are not of a high ’ standard? There are some inexperienced elderly people driving motor evhicles to-day who* are a danger to other competent road risers. They may be sufferers from intermittent epilepsy or seriously defective vision or cardiac disorders or any one of a dozen things -which, without a moment s notice, may make them absolutely unfit to walk, let alone drive a motor vehicle. On the point of physical fitness people suffering from. neurasthenia (to take ho account of physical organic disorders or frailties), perfectly sane, sound, and resourceful one moment, excitement, fright, or even great surprise will make them absolutely incapable of controlling their own bodies and limbs the next. This state of affairs when associated with elderly, inexperienced potential motorists, might frequently be detected by a physical examination. % ' MOTORING COST. • It is curious that, in view of its importance to prospective motorists, no attempt seems to have been made to work out a formula of cost (remarks “Focus” in the Auckland Herald.) Take the largest item —depreciation which many ingenuous persons say they do not count. By deciding not to count petrol or repairs the cost could be still further reduced by this method. Whatever people say, the fact remains that at one time they had, say, £350 in cash, a little later £350 in motor car value, and in a .few years only, say, £lOO in value. Depreciation depends chiefly on the price of the car and to a less extent on the distance run. Of the other items repairs and replacements depend chiefly on distance (given reasonable care), petrol on distance run, and on the character of the car which in practice usually various roughly with the price, tyres largely.on distance run, car insurance solely on the value, whereas third-party insurance registration< is the same for all cars without relation to distance., Depreciation is greatest in the first year, and then decreases; repairs and replacements increase with time; between the two the rate is fairly constant'. Any formula, then, should be in terms of car price and distance run, and the second bf these may be expressed in terms of petrol used. A suggested formula is: One-sixth of the car price plus three times the cost of petrol to give the annual cost of running a car. For example, a £2OO car does 40 miles an hour and runs 5000 miles a year. One-sixth of £2OO is £33, and 125 gallons of petrol at Is 10d a gallon is £l4, and three times that £42, making the total cost £75. MOTOR PROGRESS IN WEST AFRICA French West Africa is an outstanding example of the rapid progress that has been made in the development of motor transportation in backward and isolated countries during the past few years. Ten years ago the motor car was practically unknown in this region. According to official figures obtained from the Ministry of Colonies in Paris, there were 2296 passenger cars and 3205 trucks, or a total of 5561 motor vehicles, in operation in French West Africa on January 1, 1928. In addition, there were 485 motor cycles. On January, 1, 1920, there were in operation 1341 passenger cars and 1304 trucks. The growth in registrations over the 2-year period was more than 100 per cent.

GERMANY AIDS ITS MOTORISTS. Help for disabled motor cars on the main highways of Germany will be made available by a telephone system which is being installed by the Automobile Aid. Association,' assisted by the ; Federal Ministry of Transportation and . the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. > So far, 2500 aid staions have been es- ; tablished, linked together by an ini dependent telephone line, which has i emergency call-boxes on white poles . every two or three-miles. When misi fortune overtakes the motorist, he takes i the portable telephone with which he is s supposed to be equipped, walks to the i nearest call-box, plugs in and tells his troubles to the man at the relief ; station. „ r, i The Minister of Finance of_ Czecho- • Slovakia states that in 1927, 115 million , crowns’ worth of tyres were imported, an amount entirely out of proportion to the number of vehicles in use, due i to the poor-condition of the roads. Com- : pared with motor traffic in France and Germany, where the roads are in good repair, Czecho-Slovakia uses three times the number of tyres. All rubber, products are imported and tills is one of i the principle arguments, used by the Department "of Communications in asserting that money spent in the upkeep and; construction of roads would, among other advantages, bring an economy in such huge imports, made necessary by the'actual condition of the road network. NEW CHEVROLET SIXES IN USE. Surpassing all previous production records, the Chevrolet Motor Company, in the first six months of 1929 has produced and distributed 845,469 of its new six cylinder-type cars, which is to be found in use in virtually every country where motor cars are known. The production record for the month of June alone was 151,297 cars and trucks. TAIL LIGHT ON ELEPHANTS. A town in the Straits Settlements annoyed by frequent night collisions between motor cars and the older type of transportation by elephant power, has passed an ordnance requiring elephants, while travelling on the highways at night, to .wear tail lights. GENERAL NOTES. The violent knock which follows bigend failure comes after the damage has been done; this inefficient state of affairs is to be remedied, apparently by a German inventor whose patent specification was published the other day, says the Motor. He provides electricalresistance thermometers in each crankpin and connects them by wiring and elip-rings to an alarm bell on the dash. The- idea is that the bell should ring if the bearing reaches a dangerously high temperature, so warning the driver to cease “treading on the gas!” '** # * The twenty-fourth annual meeting of the Automobile . Association of Great Britain was held in' July. The organisation was founded in 1905 with 1000 members, and to-day it has over 400,000. Income from subscriptions last year w as £098,125. The association has over 50,000 women members, and the road patrols covered 25,980,000 miles in 1928-29. There are'73,ooo official signposts on the roads of England. # * # # The police in Edinburgh, Scotland, have been adopting fairly reasonable methods in dealing with motor traffic. During the first five months of this year approximately 1200 motorists were cautioned, while proceedings were taken in ' 400 cases for speeding. The speeds ranged from 27 . m.p.h., to about 70 m.p.h., but it -is stated only nine of the prosecutions related to speeds under . 30 m.p.h., these being offences in particularly busy streets. *.# # * i Although “high-class” is a term which ' correctly 0 describes the finish of the average modern motor coach we some- , times feel, says the Commercial Motor, that large areas of panelling carried out in a single-colour tone need some form of relief. It may be that the idea > adopted by a certain owner of 14seater vehicles will.. make an appeal to the proprietor with aesthetic tastes. This i owner has embellished the back panels of : his vehicles with oil paintings of some of the beauty spots which are visited, and.with such good effect that it certainly seems, with a greater space ayail- [ able, the scheme might be developed to I include the side panels.